Related papers: On the Existence of Spacetime Structure
In this letter we discuss the possibility of treating the spacetime by itself as a kind of deformable body for which we can define an fundamental lattice, just like atoms in crystal lattices. We show three signs pointing in that direction.…
I argue that there are no physical singularities in space-time. Singular space-time models do not belong to the ontology of the world, because of a simple reason: they are concepts, defective solutions of Einstein's field equations. I…
Baroque questions of set-theoretic foundations are widely assumed to be irrelevant to physics. In this article, I demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect. I show that the fundamental physical question of whether a theory is…
Classical mechanics, relativity, electrodynamics and quantum mechanics are often depicted as separate realms of physics, each with its own formalism and notion. This remains unsatisfactory with respect to the unity of nature and to the…
Relationships between objects constitute our notion of space. When these relationships change we interpret this as the passage of time. Observer interpretations are essential to the way we understand these relationships. Hence observer…
We consider the possibility that the basic space of physics is not spacetime, but configuration space. We illustrate this on the example with a system of gravitationally interacting point particles. It turns out that such system can be…
This paper explains why spacetime singularities do not constitute a breakdown of physical laws, and points out that the difference between the metrics at singularities and those outside of singularities is factual, rather than nomological.
This paper argues that the traditional opposition between determinism and indeterminism in physics is representational rather than ontological. Deterministic-stochastic dualities are available in principle, and arise in a non-contrived way…
We argue that there exists an operational way to establish the observability of the notions of space and time. Specifically, we propose a theory-independent protocol for a gedanken-experiment, whose outcome is a signal establishing the…
We review the investigations on the quantum structure of spactime, to be found at the Planck scale if one takes into account the operational limitations to localization of events which result from the concurrence of Quantum Mechanics and…
In this article, I argue that modern spacetime physics causes problems for a number of traditional accounts of modality, but also offers important new ideas about the connection between modal and non-modal features of reality. I suggest…
The paper adresses the problem of reasoning with ambiguities. Semantic representations are presented that leave scope relations between quantifiers and/or other operators unspecified. Truth conditions are provided for these representations…
We present a new metaphysical framework for physics that is conceptually clear, ontologically parsimonious, and empirically adequate. This framework relies on the notion of self-subsisting structure, that is, a set of fundamental physical…
Our purpose here is to introduce the idea of viewing the spacetime as a macroscopic complex system which, consequently, cannot be directly quantized. It should be thought of as a collection of more fundamental "microscopical" entities…
Time is, figuratively and literally, becoming the new dimension for crystalline matter. As such, rapid recent progress on time-varying media gave rise to the notion of temporal and spatiotemporal crystals. Fundamentally rethinking the role…
Prominently, Norton (2008) argues against constructivism about spacetime theories, the doctrine that spatiotemporal structure in the dynamics only has derivative status. Among other things, he accuses Brown and Pooley's dynamical approach…
Despite the obvious utility of the concept, it has often been argued that time does not exist. I take the opposite perspective: let's imagine that time does exist, and the universe is described by a quantum state obeying ordinary…
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…
I present an analysis of the physical assumptions needed to obtain the metric structure of space-time. For this purpose I combine the axiomatic approach pioneered by Robb with ideas drawn from works on Weyl's "Raumproblem". The concept of a…
I review the basis and limitations of plausible inference in cosmology, in particular the limitation that it can only provide fundamentally true inferences when the hypotheses under consideration form a set that is exhaustive. They never…