Related papers: Temporal Platonic Metaphysics
We present a deductive theory of space-time which is realistic, objective, and relational. It is realistic because it assumes the existence of physical things endowed with concrete properties. It is objective because it can be formulated…
In quantum gravity there is no notion of absolute time. Like all other quantities in the theory, the notion of time has to be introduced "relationally", by studying the behavior of some physical quantities in terms of others chosen as a…
Physical interpretations of the time-symmetric formulation of quantum mechanics, due to Aharonov, Bergmann, and Lebowitz are discussed in terms of weak values. The most direct, yet somewhat naive, interpretation uses the time-symmetric…
On one popular view, the general covariance of gravity implies that change is relational in a strong sense, such that all it is for a physical degree of freedom to change is for it to vary with regard to a second physical degree of freedom.…
It is postulated there is not a precise static instant in time underlying a dynamical physical process at which the relative position of a body in relative motion or a specific physical magnitude would theoretically be precisely determined.…
Time crystals are quantum many-body systems which, due to interactions between particles, are able to spontaneously self-organize their motion in a periodic way in time by analogy with the formation of crystalline structures in space in…
Quantum mechanics can seem like a departure from everyday experience of the physical world, but constructivist theories assert that learners build new ideas from their existing ones. To explore how students can navigate this tension, we…
Quantum theory (QT) has been confirmed by numerous experiments, yet we still cannot fully grasp the meaning of the theory. As a consequence, the quantum world appears to us paradoxical. Here we shed new light on QT by being based on two…
One hundred years after the creation of quantum theory, there is no consensus on the kind of reality that is described by the theory. Here, I attribute the lack of progress to the prevailing interpretative methodology, which invariably…
The problem of the Nature of Time is twofold: whether or not time is a fundamental quantity of Nature, and how does clock time of metrology emerge in the experimental description of dynamics. This work strongly supports the fundamental…
It is argued that substantial portions of both Newtonian particle mechanics and general relativity can be viewed as relational (rather than absolute) theories. I furthermore use the relational particle models as toy models to investigate…
The standard formulation of quantum theory assumes a predefined notion of time. This is a major obstacle in the search for a quantum theory of gravity, where the causal structure of space-time is expected to be dynamical and fundamentally…
The question of what should be meant by a measurement is tackled from a mathematical perspective whose physical interpretation is that a measurement is a fundamental process via which a finite amount of classical information is produced.…
Based on a clear ontology of material individuals, we analyze in detail the factual semantics of quantum theory, and argue that the basic mathematical formalism of quantum theory is just okay with (a certain form of ) realism and that it is…
It is well known that nonrelativistic quantum mechanics presents a clear asymmetry between space and time. Much of this asymmetry is attributed to the lack of Lorentz invariance of the theory. Nonetheless, a recent work [Phys. Rev. A…
In it's usual presentation, classical mechanics appears to give time a very special role. But it is well known that mechanics can be formulated so as to treat the time variable on the same footing as the other variables in the extended…
According to Aristotle "time is the number of change with respect to the before and after". That's certainly a vague concept, but at the same time it's both simple and satisfying from a philosophical point of view: things do not change…
Relational mechanics is a reformulation of mechanics (classical or quantum) for which space is relational. This means that the configuration of an $N$-particle system is a shape, which is what remains when the effects of rotations,…
Our notions of what is physically 'real' have long been based on the idea that the real is what is immediately apprehended, that is the local or observable, the physically tangible, though there has always been an alternative philosophical…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…