RECORDS THEORY

Abstract

In quantum gravity, one seeks to combine quantum mechanics and general relativity. In attempting to do so, one comes across the "problem of time" impasse: the notion of time is conceptually different in each of these theories. In this paper, I consider the timeless records approach to resolving this. Records are localized, information-containing subconfigurations of a single instant. Records theory is the study of these and of how science (or history) is to be abstracted from correlations between them. I critically evaluate motivations for this approach that have previously appeared in the literature. I provide a ground-level structure for records theory and discuss what kind of further tools are needed, illustrated with some toy models: ordinary mechanics, relational particle dynamics, detector models and inhomogeneous perturbations about homogeneous cosmology.