Litcius/Paper detail

The Relativity of Indeterminacy

Flavio Del Santo

2021MDPI (MDPI AG)22 citationsDOIOpen Access PDF

Abstract

A long-standing tradition, largely present in both the physical and the philosophical literature, regards the advent of (special) relativity—with its block-universe picture—as the failure of any indeterministic program in physics. On the contrary, in this paper, we note that upholding reasonable principles of finiteness of information hints at a picture of the physical world that should be both relativistic and indeterministic. We thus rebut the block-universe picture by assuming that fundamental indeterminacy itself should also be regarded as a relative property when considered in a relativistic scenario. We discuss the consequence that this view may have when correlated randomness is introduced, both in the classical case and in the quantum one.

Topics & Concepts

Indeterminacy (philosophy)Theory of relativityRandomnessTheoretical physicsClassical physicsTwin paradoxSpecial relativityUniverseProperty (philosophy)Problem of timeEpistemologyPhilosophy of sciencePhysicsQuantumMathematicsClassical mechanicsPhilosophyQuantum gravityQuantum mechanicsFour-forceStatisticsQuantum Mechanics and ApplicationsComputability, Logic, AI AlgorithmsPhilosophy and History of Science
The Relativity of Indeterminacy | Litcius