Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T21:05:07.914Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

No Time for Time from No-Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Eugene Y. S. Chua  and
Craig Callender
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Programs in quantum gravity often claim that time emerges from fundamentally timeless physics. In the semiclassical time program, time arises only after approximations are taken. Here we ask what justifies taking these approximations and show that time seems to sneak in when answering this question. This raises the worry that the approach is either unjustified or circular in deriving time from no-time.

Type
Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 88 , Issue 5 , December 2021 , pp. 1172 - 1184
Copyright
Copyright 2021 by the Philosophy of Science Association. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

We thank Maaneli Derakhshani, Valia Allori, the Southern California Philosophy of Physics Group, and participants of the Workshop in Celebration of David Albert’s Birthday for their comments/feedback.

References

Allori, Valia, and Zanghi, Nino. 2009. “On the Classical Limit of Quantum Mechanics.” Foundations of Physics 39 (1): 20–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, E. 2007. “Emergent Semiclassical Time in Quantum Gravity.” Pt. 1, “Mechanical Models.” Classical and Quantum Gravity 24 (11): 2935–78.Google Scholar
Baker, D. 2007. “Measurement Outcomes and Probability in Everettian Quantum Mechanics.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science B 38 (1): 153–69.Google Scholar
Banks, T. 1985. “TCP, Quantum Gravity, the Cosmological Constant and All That.” Nuclear Physics B 249:332–60.Google Scholar
Derakhshani, M. 2018. “Is Standard Semiclassical Einstein Gravity Viable?” Talk at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Cologne, April.Google Scholar
DeWitt, B. S. 1967. “Quantum Theory of Gravity.” Pt. 1, “The Canonical Theory.” Physical Review 160 (5): 1113–48.10.1103/PhysRev.160.1113CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffiths, D. J. 2005. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Kent, A. 2010. “One World versus Many: The Inadequacy of Everettian Accounts of Evolution, Probability, and Scientific Confirmation.” In Many Worlds? Everett, Quantum Theory, and Reality, ed. Saunders, S., Barrett, J., Wallace, D., and Kent, A.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kiefer, C. 2004. Quantum Gravity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kuchař, K. V. 2011. “Time and Interpretation of Quantum Gravity.” International Journal of Modern Physics D 20 (Supp. 1): 3–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace, D. 2012. The Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory according to the Everett Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zurek, W. H. 2005. “Probabilities from Entanglement, Born’s Rule from Envariance.” Physical Review A 71 (5): 052105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar