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What Entanglement Might Be Telling Us: Space, Quantum Mechanics, and Bohm’s Fish Tank

Jenann Ismael

Published Apr 30, 2020• 5 citations

Abstract

There are pressures that are coming from a number of quarters in quantum cosmology to view space or space-time as an emergent structure. But in recent years in the foundations of standard, non-relativistic quantum mechanics, interpretations have emerged that treat space as emergent. My primary purpose is (i) to make explicit the considerations stemming from quantum mechanics alone, that are pushing in the direction of viewing space (or space-time) as an emergent structure, and (ii)to clarify exactly what it means to say that space is emergent in the sense that this chapter is interested inhere. Itdoes that by presenting some simple low-dimensional models that reproduce central features of quantum phenomena, and analyzing the examples with attention to the difference between two different kinds of explanation: one in which the correlations emerge from a more fundamental (and not ultimately spatial) description and one in which correlations are explained by influences that pass through the space in which the correlated events are situated.

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198831501.003.0008

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