Spacetime as Emergent: From Quantum Relations to Geometry

The nature of spacetime has been a central puzzle in physics for over a century. While General Relativity treats spacetime as a smooth, dynamic geometry shaped by mass and energy, quantum theory suggests that at the smallest scales, the fabric of reality is anything but smooth or fixed.

This post explores how spacetime itself may emerge from underlying quantum relationality, reframing geometry not as a fixed backdrop, but as a macroscopic manifestation of fundamental relational fields.

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1. The Challenge: Incompatible Foundations

Classical spacetime assumes:

• A continuous manifold with defined points and metrics,

• Absolute notions of locality and simultaneity.

Quantum theory, in contrast, reveals:

• Nonlocal correlations,

• Context-dependent properties,

• Indeterminacy and processual becoming.

Reconciling these views remains a key challenge for quantum gravity.

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2. Relational Ontology: Relations Before Space

Within a relational framework:

• Relations are fundamental, not embedded in a pre-existing space,

• Spatial and temporal metrics arise from patterns of relational coherence,

• Geometry emerges as an effective description of constraints among relational configurations.

This echoes Wheeler’s “It from bit” and other information-theoretic approaches, but grounded in ontological relationality rather than mere epistemology.

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3. Conceptual Implications

If spacetime is emergent:

• Points and distances are secondary concepts derived from the web of relational interactions,

• Locality is an approximate, large-scale feature of a fundamentally nonlocal quantum network,

• Causality and geometry co-arise as modes of systemic constraint stabilising over scales.

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4. Connecting to Quantum Gravity Research

This relational emergence perspective aligns with:

• Loop Quantum Gravity’s spin networks and spin foams,

• Causal Set Theory’s discrete relational structure,

• Holographic principles linking boundary information to bulk geometry.

All suggest spacetime geometry is a higher-level effect of more fundamental relational dynamics.

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Closing

Viewing spacetime as emergent from quantum relations reshapes foundational questions:

• Space and time are not arenas but products,

• Geometry is a dynamic expression of coherence,

• Reality’s fabric is a living field of relational actualisations.

In the next post, we will examine the implications of emergent spacetime for the nature of time itself: What does becoming mean when time is not fundamental?