4 ms·

This criticism was first raised by Motl, and is dismissed by Koelman here: http://www.science20.com/comments/47263/Re_It_Bit_Whole_Shebang http://www.science20.

• diminish 15y ago
  I am curious if there could be any theoretical reasoning why gravity can't be emergent, rather than experimental.. Could someone explain, what is meant exactly by `emergent'? What is the antonyme? For example. I mean can't we assume all standard quantum model implies all quantum phenomena are emergent?
  • Dn_Ab 15y ago
    A reason that is theoretical must be backed by experiments. You cannot have one without the other without entering the religious realm. And you cannot have a completely mathematical explanation of reality because your axioms must have experimental backing. As I understand it, emergent means the behaviour of a collection of entities that comes about due to their interactions in a way that is not predictable from a full theory of its constituents. The opposite of an emergent theory would be a reductionist theory.
• Dn_Ab 15y ago
  The new paper purports to deal with those criticisms. To my limited understanding it appears to be an argument against how the Hamiltonian is currently formulated in Verlinde's theory than a proof against entropic gravity.