Related papers: Spacetime functionalism from a realist perspective
What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism. We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture; and…
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…
In order to obtain a well defined quantum gravity we define the spacetime in relation to the "phenomenology" of the physical interactions; however we shall to speculate with this "in General". Besides, we comment the reasons that give to…
This is a contribution to a book on quantum gravity and philosophy. I discuss nature and origin of the problem of quantum gravity. I examine the knowledge that may guide us in addressing this problem, and the reliability of such knowledge.…
The contemporary physics has revealed growing evidences that the emergence can be applied to not only biology and condensed matter systems but also gravity and spacetime. We observe that noncommutative spacetime necessarily implies emergent…
Time in quantum gravity is not a well-defined notion, despite its central role in the very definition of dynamics. Using the formalism of quantum geometrodynamics, we shortly review the problem and illustrate it with two proposed solutions.…
A set of diverse but mutually consistent results obtained in different settings has spawned a new view of loop quantum gravity and its physical implications, based on the interplay of operator calculations and effective theory: Quantum…
Different aspects of relativity, mainly in a canonical formulation, relevant for the question "Is spacetime nothing more than a mathematical space (which describes the evolution in time of the ordinary three-dimensional world) or is it a…
Although the standard viewpoint in theoretical physics is that the unification of quantum theory and general relativity requires the quantization of gravity and spacetime, there is not consensus about whether spacetime must fundamentally…
Time is absolute in standard quantum theory and dynamical in general relativity. The combination of both theories into a theory of quantum gravity leads therefore to a "problem of time". In my essay I shall investigate those consequences…
The problem of constructing a quantum theory of gravity is considered from a novel viewpoint. It is argued that any consistent theory of gravity should incorporate a relational character between the matter constituents of the theory. In…
The aim of this work is to review the concepts of time in quantum mechanics and general relativity to show their incompatibility. We show that the absolute character of Newtonian time is present in quantum mechanics and also partially in…
The literature on quantum-gravity-inspired scenarios for the quantization of spacetime has so far focused on particle-physics-like studies. This is partly justified by the present limitations of our understanding of quantum-gravity…
General relativity is a background-independent theory of a dynamical classical spacetime geometry. Quantum theory is formulated in a classical spacetime, as an intrinsically probabilistic, contextual theory of non-classical, interfering…
We will highlight that despite there being various approaches to quantum gravity, there are universal approach-independent features of quantum gravity. The geometry of spacetime becomes an emergent structure, which emerges from some purely…
Most approaches to quantum gravity suggest that relativistic spacetime is not fundamental, but instead emerges from some non-spatiotemporal structure. This paper investigates the implications of this suggestion for the possibility of time…
Quantum gravity--the marriage of quantum physics with general relativity--is bound to contain deep and important lessons for the nature of physical time. Some of these lessons shall be canvassed here, particularly as they arise from quantum…
Numerous approaches to a quantum theory of gravity posit fundamental ontologies that exclude spacetime, either partially or wholly. This situation raises deep questions about how such theories could relate to the empirical realm, since…
Understanding the quantum aspects of gravity is not only a matter of equations and experiments. Gravity is intimately connected with the structure of space and time, and understanding quantum gravity requires us to find a conceptual…
We show that universal functions play an important role in the observation of the fractal structure of space--time in the numerical simulation of quantum gravity.