The Structure of Causal Sets

In this talk, I will introduce a particularly simple approach to quantum gravity, causal set theory. This approach has been pioneered in the 1970s by Myrheim and 't Hooft and developed by a number of physicists around Rafael Sorkin at Syracuse since the 1980s. Even though the approach is still rather inchoate and requires substantial work in order to qualify as a genuine competitor for a full quantum theory of gravity, its conceptual simplicity offers a number of advantages of interest to physicists and philosophers alike. First, it provides a kind of conceptual laboratory for physicists to learn how various basic principles interact. Second, it promises to shed light on the important connection between a fundamentally discrete structure and relativistic spacetimes and on how the latter can emerge from the former. Third, it offers a paradigmatic case of a physical theory predestined to be interpreted in structuralism terms. I will explain the main motivations for structuralism in fundamental physics and show how philosophical interest in structuralism and technical issues in causal set theory interact.