Appearing Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Gravity

Understand

Quantum gravity is understood as a theory that, in some sense, unifies general relativity (GR) and quantum theory, and is supposed to replace GR at extremely small distances (high-energies).

• It may be that quantum gravity represents the breakdown of spacetime geometry described by GR.
• The relationship between quantum gravity and spacetime has been deemed "emergence", and the aim of this thesis is to investigate and explicate this relation.
• After finding traditional philosophical accounts of emergence to be inappropriate, I develop a new conception of emergence by considering physical case studies including condensed matter physics, hydrodynamics, critical phenomena and quantum field theory understood as effective field theory.