Related papers: On the Existence of Spacetime Structure

We survey indications from different branches of Physics that the fine scale structure of spacetime is not adequately described by a manifold. Based on the hints we accumulate, we propose a new structure, which we call a quantum topos. In…

Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…

We present current theories about the structure of space and time, where the building blocks are some fundamental entities (yes-no experiment, quantum processes, spin net-work, preparticles) that do not presuppose the existence of space and…

I argue that the Hole Argument is based on a misleading use of the mathematical formalism of general relativity. If one is attentive to mathematical practice, I will argue, the Hole Argument is blocked.

Einstein distinguished between ``principle'' and ``constructive'' theories in physics, and although he thought the latter were more explanatory than the former, he regarded his 1905 formulation of special relativity theory as a principle…

I explain in what sense the structure of space and time is probably vague or indefinite, a notion I define. This leads to the mathematical representation of location in space and time by a vague interval. From this, a principle of…

We address a recent proposal concerning 'surplus structure' due to Nguyen et al. ['Why Surplus Structure is Not Superfluous.' Br. J. Phi. Sci. Forthcoming.] We argue that the sense of 'surplus structure' captured by their formal criterion…

I discuss several issues related to "classical" spacetime structure. I review Galilean, Newtonian, and Leibnizian spacetimes, and briefly describe more recent developments. The target audience is undergraduates and early graduate students…

All gauge theories need ``something fixed'' even as ``something changes.'' Underlying the implementation of these ideas all major physical theories make indispensable use of an elaborately designed spacetime model as the ``something…

We will prove that, in general, a system formed by several particles moving along relativistic trajectories can not be described by a mechanical system. The contradiction that leads to the previous assertion is due to the fact that a…

We discuss the problem of determining the spacetime structure. We show that when we are using only topological methods the spacetime can be modelled as an R- or Q-compact space although the R-compact spaces seem to be more appropriate.…

I would like to consider the Beginning of space-time in this paper. First of all, we do consideration historical thought. A lot of philosophers have considered the relation between this real phenomenal world and the basic world in which the…

Rather than an a priori arena in which events take place, space-time is a construction of our mind making possible a particular kind of ordering of events. As quantum entanglement is a property of states independent of classical distances,…

The tomographic histories approach is presented. As an inverse problem, we recover in an operational way the effective topology of the extended configuration space of a system. This means that from a series of experiments we get a set of…

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…

Contrary to our immediate and vivid sensation of past, present, and future as continually shifting non-relational modalities, time remains as tenseless and relational as space in all of the established theories of fundamental physics. Here…

Even though the concepts of time and space are basic concepts of physics, they have not been vouchsafed a constructive definition. As to space, this is no wonder because a correct notion of space cannot be formed in the frame of the…

A general sketch of how the problem of space dimensionality depends on Anthropic arguments is presented. A new argument in favor of a stable scenario for space dimensionality for a time scale longer than that required for the existence of…

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…

I argue that spacetime singularities entail no ontological commitment to material entities. First, I show that Penrose's singularity theorem is best understood as a theorem of incompleteness, it demonstrates the failure of specific…