Tim Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity: Metaphysical Intimations of Modern Physics (Aristotelian Society Series, Volume 13), Oxford UK & Cambridge USA:

Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity has the rare quality of being both a significant contribution to the philosophy of physics literature and a superb introduction for philosophers unacquainted with the field. Maudlin sets out to examine the implications for our understanding of the fundamental structure of space, time, and causation of what appears to be a mysterious action-at-a-distance observed in the quantum domain. Physicists and philosophers of physics have been grappling with these implications for the last half-century, and Maudlin does a remarkable job of elucidating central themes in the literature and clarifying conceptual confusions. Throughout the book, Maudlin draws out salient points from what can easily become a morass of scientific and philosophical technicalities. At the root of puzzles concerning relativity and quantum mechanics lie a few simple experimental facts. In an experimental setup in which quantum particles begin from a common source and travel in opposite directions, distant (spacelike separated) measurements of properties of the two particles are strangely correlated. These correlations have been observed, for example, in experiments which measure polarization properties of photons. A well-known theorem due to John S. Bell (1964) expresses a constraint on the kind of correlations that measurement outcomes in this experimental setup (known as a "Bell experiment") can display, in the absence of any communication between them. The surprise is that observed correlations violate Bell's theorem, meaning that the measurement events appear somehow to be influencing each other or to be otherwise connected. But there's the rub: in Bell experiments, measurements are spacelike separated, which means they are too far apart for any force of nature travelling at or below the speed of light to traverse the distance between them in time. Faster-than-light influences seem to fly squarely (and rather quickly) in the face of everything Einstein taught us about the structure of space and time. As it is often understood, the special theory of relativity asserts that the speed of light in a vacuum is some sort of physical limit, and that matter, energy, signals, causal influence, and the like cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Do the