Emergent spacetime and empirical (in)coherence

DOI10.1016/J.SHPSB.2012.11.003MaRDI QIDQ2436263zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Nick Huggett, Christian Wüthrich

Publication date 21 February 2014

Published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Part B. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6290, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4rz8v6t6

zbMATH Keywords

causal set theoryempirical incoherenceloop quantum gravitynon-commutative geometryquantum gravityspacetimestring theory

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Physics (00A79) Quantization of the gravitational field (83C45) Methods of noncommutative geometry in general relativity (83C65) String and superstring theories in gravitational theory (83E30)

Abstract: 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 arguably only entities localized in spacetime can ever be observed. Are such entities even possible in a theory without fundamental spacetime? How might they be derived, formally speaking? Moreover, since by assumption the fundamental entities can't be smaller than the derived (since relative size is a spatiotemporal notion) and so can't 'compose' them in any ordinary sense, would a formal derivation actually show the physical reality of localized entities? We address these questions via a survey of a range of theories of quantum gravity, and generally sketch how they may be answered positively.

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