Beyond Spacetime: The Foundations of Quantum Gravity

Beyond Spacetime: The Foundations of Quantum Gravity is one of two edited volumes stemming from a three-year research project led by Nick Huggett and Chris Wuthrich on the philosophy of quantum gravity, with the goal of “explor[ing] the idea that attempts to quantize gravity either significantly modify the structures of classical spacetime or replace them—and spacetime itself—altogether” (1). The background thought here is that such attempts naturally involve an admixture of philosophy and physics, and scrutinizing them is bound to shed new light on the philosophy of space and time, on the notion of “emergence,” and, more generally, on the philosophy of the empirical discipline that we call “physics.” The editors—Huggett, Keizo Matsubara, and Wuthrich—are to be congratulated for bringing together an impressive list of contributors in this 357-page volume (eight philosophers and eight physicists) to participate in a genuinely interdisciplinary conversation and, moreover, for undertaking the challenging task of...