Einstein's Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum

by Lee Smolin

Here is a one-sentence summary of this theory: the universe consists of nothing but views of itself, each from an event in its history, and the laws act to make these views as diverse as possible. From here the story unfolds very much like that of the real ensemble theory. Similar views interact with each other, as a result of the mandate to evolve in the direction of ever more diversity. This leads to the emergence of space and of locality in that space. Nonlocality also emerges as interactions which are distant in the emergent space but nearby in terms of similarity of views. Finally, as in the real ensemble formulation, quantum mechanics arises from these nonlocal interactions as an approximate description of the dynamics of views. The causal theory of views is then a route to a completion of quantum mechanics. It is a realist completion, because it is a theory of beables, which are the views themselves. Most important, it demonstrates that a single fundamental theory can be at the same time a completion of quantum mechanics and an atomic model of spacetime. It can explain the emergence of both locality and nonlocality, of both spacetime and quantum mechanics. This theory is still only part of the story, and there is still much to learn about it, but it is a way the world might be.