Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale: Contemporary Theories in Quantum Gravity

Preface 1. Introduction Craig Callendar and Nick Huggett Part I. Theories of Quantum Gravity and their Philosophical Dimensions: 2. Spacetime and the philosophical challenge of quantum gravity Jeremy Butterfield and Christopher Isham 3. Naive quantum gravity Steven Weinstein 4. Quantum spacetime: what do we know? Carlo Rovelli Part II. Strings: 5. Reflections on the fate of spacetime Edward Witten 6. A philosopher looks at string theory Robert Weingard 7. Black holes, dumb holes, and entropy William G. Unruh Part III. Topological Quantum Field Theory: 8. Higher-dimensional algebra and Planck scale physics John C. Baez Part IV. Quantum Gravity and the Interpretation of General Relativity: 9. On general covariance and best matching Julian B. Barbour 10. Pre-Socratic quantum gravity Gordon Belot and John Earman 11. The origin of the spacetime metric: Bell's 'Lorentzian Pedagogy' and its significance in general relativity Harvey R. Brown and Oliver Pooley Part IV. Quantum Gravity and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: 12. Quantum spacetime without observers: ontological clarity and the conceptual foundations of quantum gravity Sheldon Goldstein and Stefan Teufel 13. On gravity's role in quantum state reduction Roger Penrose 14. Why the quantum must yield to gravity Joy Christian.