Related papers: Princeton seminars on physics and philosophy
We present the arguments suggesting that time is emergent in quantum gravity and discuss extensively, but without any technical detail, the many aspects that can be involved in such emergence. We refer to both the physical issues that need…
This book includes my lectures, together with their problem sets and solutions, on 1) classical mechanics (one semester), 2) thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (one semester), and 3) quantum mechanics (one semester), which I have been…
These lecture notes are intended for starting PhD students in theoretical physics who have a working knowledge of General Relativity. The 4 topics covered are (1) Surface charges as conserved quantities in theories of gravity; (2) Classical…
Here I indulge in wide-ranging speculations on the shape of physics, and technology closely related to physics, over the next one hundred years. Themes include the many faces of unification, the re-imagining of quantum theory, and new forms…
A new direction to understand gravity has recently been explored by considering classical gravity to be a derived interaction from an underlying theory. This underlying theory would involve new degrees of freedom at a deeper level and it…
We discuss foundation of quantum mechanics (interpretations, superposition, principle of complementarity, locality, hidden variables) and quantum information theory.
I review and discuss some recent developments in non-perturbative approaches to quantum gravity, with an emphasis on discrete formulations, and those coming from a classical connection description.
Contemporary scientific perspectivism is re-evaluated and extended to a comprehensive perspectivist methodology and 'mediated' realistic epistemology, especially, with reference to quantum mechanics. In the present study, this is realized…
It is generally assumed that the search for a consistent and testable theory of quantum gravity is among the most important open problems of fundamental physics. I review the motivations for this search, the main problems on the way, and…
The representations of the world around in physics built with help of causality are analyzed and seems incomplete. The observer's causal representations form a closed logical system, i.e. the compact group related to cause-effect chains.…
Research in quantum gravity strongly suggests that our world in not fundamentally spatiotemporal, but that spacetime may only emerge in some sense from a non-spatiotemporal structure, as this paper illustrates in the case of causal set…
I shall discuss some "conditions of possibility" of a quantum theory of gravity, stressing the need for solutions to some of fundamental problems confronting any attempt to apply some method of quantization to the field equations of general…
These notes summarize a set of lectures on phenomenological quantum gravity which one of us delivered and the other attended with great diligence. They cover an assortment of topics on the border between theoretical quantum gravity and…
Planck scale physics represents a future challenge, located between particle physics and general relativity. The Planck scale marks a threshold beyond which the old description of spacetime breaks down and conceptually new phenomena must…
Observed physical phenomena can be described well by quantum mechanics or general relativity. People may try to find an unified fundamental theory which mainly aims to merge gravity with quantum theory. However, difficulty in merging those…
A sketch of three senses of emergence and a suggestive view on the emergence of time and the direction of time is presented. After trying to identify which issues philosophers interested in emergent phenomena in physics view as important I…
I present a discussion of some open issues in the philosophy of space-time theories. Emphasis is put on the ontological nature of space and time, the relation between determinism and predictability, the origin of irreversible processes in…
Two popular attempts to understand the quantum physics of gravitation are critically assessed. The talk on which this paper is based was intended for a general particle-physics audience.
Starting from the guiding principles of spacetime locality and operationalism, a general framework for a probabilistic description of nature is proposed. Crucially, no notion of time or metric is assumed, neither any specific physical…
In this note, we attempt to provide some insights into the structure of non-perturbative descriptions of quantum gravity using known examples of gauge-theory / gravity duality. We argue that in familiar examples, a quantum description of…