Related papers: Where to Apply Relationalism
The perspective is advanced that the time parameter in quantum mechanics corresponds to the time coordinate in a Minkowski flat spacetime local approximation to the actual dynamical curved spacetime of General Relativity, rather than to an…
Relational particle models are useful toy models for quantum cosmology and the problem of time in quantum general relativity. This paper shows how to extend existing work on concrete examples of relational particle models in 1-d to include…
The problem of time in quantum gravity occurs because `time' is taken to have a different meaning in each of general relativity and ordinary quantum theory. This incompatibility creates serious problems with trying to replace these two…
A recently introduced discrete formalism allows to solve the problem of time in quantum gravity in a relational manner. Quantum mechanics formulated with a relational time is not exactly unitary and implies a fundamental mechanism for…
The paper presents a program to construct a non-relativistic relational Bohmian theory, that is, a theory of $N$ moving point-like particles that dispenses with space and time as fundamental background structures. The relational program…
In this article I elaborate on the approach to relational quantum mechanics suggested by Adlam and Rovelli (2023). I suggest that this approach fills an important gap in the spectrum of relational approaches, because it posits that the…
This is an introduction to the by now fifteen years old research field of canonical quantum general relativity, sometimes called "loop quantum gravity". The term "modern" in the title refers to the fact that the quantum theory is based on…
In this paper I argue that the fundamental aspect of our notion of time is that it defines an order relation, be it a total order relation between configurations of the world or just a partial order relation between events. This position is…
Time in relativity theory has a status different from that adopted by standard quantum mechanics, where time is considered as a parameter measured with reference to an external absolute Newtonian frame. This status strongly restricts its…
This paper concerns the absolute versus relative motion debate. The Barbour and Bertotti 1982 work may be viewed as an indirectly set up relational formulation of a portion of Newtonian mechanics. I consider further direct formulations of…
A discursive, non-technical, analysis is made of some of the basic issues that arise in almost any approach to quantum gravity, and of how these issues stand in relation to recent developments in the field. Specific topics include the…
We provide here a philosophical basis for [arXiv:2012.03994, arXiv:2107.06693] based on the notion of spacetime relationalism. We argue that the view which is more cleanly compatible with GR is that in which the spacetime manifold is a…
In the canonical approach to quantization of gravity, one often uses relational clock variables and an interpretation in terms of conditional probabilities to overcome the problem of time. In this essay we show that these suffer from…
We propose a solution to the problem of time for systems with a single global Hamiltonian constraint. Our solution stems from the observation that, for these theories, conventional gauge theory methods fail to capture the full classical…
Recently, there has been increased interest in understanding entanglement and quantum communication in black hole spacetimes and in using quantum information techniques to address questions in gravity. Studies on relativistic entanglement…
Understanding the emergence of a tangible 4-dimensional space-time from a quantum theory of gravity promises to be a tremendously difficult task. This article makes the case that this task may not have to be carried. Space-time as we know…
The incompatibility between the treatment of time in the classical and in the quantum theory results in the so-called problem of time in canonical quantum gravity. For this reason, attempts have been made to devise algorithms of…
Temporal Relationalism (TR) is that there is no time for the universe as a whole at the primary level. Time emerges rather at a secondary level; one compelling idea for this is Mach's `time is to be abstracted from change'. TR leads to, and…
The canonical formalism of general relativity affords a particularly interesting characterisation of the infamous hole argument. It also provides a natural formalism in which to relate the hole argument to the problem of time in classical…
In prior work, we have argued that spacetime functionalism provides tools for clarifying the conceptual difficulties specifically linked to the emergence of spacetime in certain approaches to quantum gravity. We argue in this article that…