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Relational Structures of Fundamental Theories

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Abstract

General relativity and quantum mechanics have both revealed the relativity of certain notions that were previously thought to be absolute. I clarify the precise sense in which these theories are relational, and I argue that the various aspects of relationality pertain to the same movement in the progress of physical theories.

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Notes

  1. The original article of Wigner dates from 1961 [5].

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Acknowledgements

I thank the organisers of the QISS conference in Hong Kong in January 2020 for giving me the opportunity to deepen and present the ideas contained in this paper. This publication was made possible through the support of the ID# 61466 Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, as part of the Quantum Information Structure of Spacetime (QISS) project (http://www.qiss.fr). The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

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  1. Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA

    Pierre Martin-Dussaud

  2. Basic Research Community for Physics e.V., Mariannenstraße 89, Leipzig, Germany

    Pierre Martin-Dussaud

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Correspondence to Pierre Martin-Dussaud.

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Martin-Dussaud, P. Relational Structures of Fundamental Theories. Found Phys 51, 24 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-021-00444-x

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