Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Photographs of the conference
- Introduction: Conceptual issues in quantum field theory
- Part One Philosophers' interest in quantum field theory
- Part Two Three approaches to the foundations of quantum field theory
- Part Three
- Part Four Mathematics, statistics and quantum field theory
- Part Five Quantum field theory and space-time
- Introduction
- 12 Quantum field theory and space-time – formalism and reality
- 13 Quantum field theory of geometry
- 14 ‘Localization’ in quantum field theory: how much of QFT is compatible with what we know about space-time?
- 15 Comments
- Part Six
- Part Seven Renormalization group
- Part Eight Non-Abelian gauge theory
- Part Nine The ontology of particles or fields
- Part Ten
- Name index
- Subject index
15 - Comments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Photographs of the conference
- Introduction: Conceptual issues in quantum field theory
- Part One Philosophers' interest in quantum field theory
- Part Two Three approaches to the foundations of quantum field theory
- Part Three
- Part Four Mathematics, statistics and quantum field theory
- Part Five Quantum field theory and space-time
- Introduction
- 12 Quantum field theory and space-time – formalism and reality
- 13 Quantum field theory of geometry
- 14 ‘Localization’ in quantum field theory: how much of QFT is compatible with what we know about space-time?
- 15 Comments
- Part Six
- Part Seven Renormalization group
- Part Eight Non-Abelian gauge theory
- Part Nine The ontology of particles or fields
- Part Ten
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
During the almost 40 years that I have been following it, there has been an amazing (to me, at any rate) change in the tenor of the discussion about the relation between quantum field theory and general relativity. In 1957, I started graduate studies at Stevens Institute of Technology, then a world center of relativity research: there were actually three people there who worked on such problems! I soon started attending the famous informal Stevens relativity meetings, getting to know many of the leading figures in the field, and meeting most of the others at the 1959 Royaumont GRG meeting.
This was a time of high tension, of struggle between two rival imperialisms, one clearly much stronger than the other. I am referring, of course, to the dominant quantum field theory paradigm, which was stubbornly resisted by the much weaker unified field theory program. I call these two programs imperialisms because each had a universalist ideology used to justify an annexationist policy. Einstein's unified field program aimed to annex quantum phenomena by means of some generally covariant extension of general relativity that would include electromagnetism, somehow miraculously bypassing quantum mechanics. The structure of matter and radiation, including all quantum effects, would result from finding non-singular solutions to the right set of non-linear field equations. In spite of repeated failures over 30-40 years, Einstein persisted in working toward this goal, though not without increasing doubts, particularly towards the end of his life.
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- Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory , pp. 233 - 240Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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