The Quantum Description Of Spacetime Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 862):

Similarly, in standard quantum mechanics, all the variables defining a spacetime state cannot be determined together. The quantum description of spacetime should nevertheless be perfectly well defined. But the Heisenberg principle tells us that this description cannot resemble a classical (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold, as different spacetime geometric quantities do not commute with one another. Instead, according to Wheeler’s picture, the state would consist of a vast superposition of different geometries, most of which would deviate wildly from flatness and so have the ‘foamlike’ character that he envisages.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, this confuses what is located in spacetime with the spacetime in which phenomena are located. For example, 'all the variables defining a spacetime state' are the variables of phenomena at a specified location in spacetime.

Moreover, the superposition of variables is the superposition of potential variables, not the superposition of actual variables that instantiate that potential, and the 'foamlike' character is concerned with instantiations of this potential, not with the spatiotemporal dimensions in which such instantiations are located.