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Why Spacetime Has a Life of Its Own

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Space, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding

Part of the book series: The Frontiers Collection ((FRONTCOLL))

Abstract

This chapter is a brief survey of some of the reasons, including a new one, for thinking. Space (or spacetime) is a thing in its own right. This means it is not reducible to or emergent from matter/energy. Space (spacetime) interacts with matter/energy, but it has a life of its own.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    At least, this is the standard view, but it is controversial. See [6] for a brief survey of rival views.

References

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  3. Guth, A. (1981). The inflationary universe: a possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems. Physical Review D, 23, 347. OCLC 4433735058.

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  4. Krasny, M. (2006). Retrieved February 1, 2016 from http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201403190900.

  5. Misner, C., Thorne, K., & Wheeler, J. (1974). Gravitation. New York: Freeman.

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  6. Bonnor, W. B. (2000). Local Dynamics and the Expansion of the Universe. General Relativity and Gravitation, 32(6), 1005–1007.

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Acknowledgements

The parts of this essay concerning metric expansion stem from joint work with Keizo Matsubara and Lee Smolin. I am grateful to the editors for their invitation and for comments on an earlier draft.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    James Robert Brown

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  1. James Robert Brown
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Correspondence to James Robert Brown .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Podar Educational Complex, R. N. Podar (CBSE) Podar Educational Complex, Mumbai, India

    Shyam Wuppuluri

  2. Centre for Theoretical Physics, Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

    Giancarlo Ghirardi

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Brown, J.R. (2017). Why Spacetime Has a Life of Its Own. In: Wuppuluri, S., Ghirardi, G. (eds) Space, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44418-5_6

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