The Fine-Tuning Argument

Our laws of nature and our cosmos appear to be delicately fine-tuned for life to emerge, in a way that seems hard to attribute to chance. In view of this, some have taken the opportunity to revive the scholastic Argument from Design, whereas others have felt the need to explain this apparent fine-tuning of the clockwork of the Universe by proposing the existence of a `Multiverse'. We analyze this issue from a sober perspective. Having reviewed the literature and having added several observations of our own, we conclude that cosmic fine-tuning supports neither Design nor a Multiverse, since both of these fail at an explanatory level as well as in a more quantitative context of Bayesian confirmation theory (although there might be other reasons to believe in these ideas, to be found in religion and in inflation and/or string theory, respectively). In fact, fine-tuning and Design even seem to be at odds with each other, whereas the inference from fine-tuning to a Multiverse only works if the latter is underwritten by an additional metaphysical hypothesis we consider unwarranted. Instead, we suggest that fine-tuning requires no special explanation at all, since it is not the Universe that is fine-tuned for life, but life that has been fine-tuned to the Universe.Comment: 16 pages, written for a general audienc

Functorial quantization and the Guillemin-Sternberg conjecture

We propose that geometric quantization of symplectic manifolds is the arrow part of a functor, whose object part is deformation quantization of Poisson manifolds. The `quantization commutes with reduction' conjecture of Guillemin and Sternberg then becomes a special case of the functoriality of quantization. In fact, our formulation yields almost unlimited generalizations of the Guillemin--Sternberg conjecture, extending it, for example, to arbitrary Lie groups or even Lie groupoids. Technically, this involves symplectic reduction and Weinstein's dual pairs on the classical side, and Kasparov's bivariant K-theory for C*-algebras (KK-theory) on the quantum side.Comment: 15 pages. Proc. Bialowieza 200

When champions meet: Rethinking the Bohr--Einstein debate

Einstein's philosophy of physics (as clarified by Fine, Howard, and Held) was predicated on his Trennungsprinzip, a combination of separability and locality, without which he believed objectification, and thereby "physical thought" and "physical laws", to be impossible. Bohr's philosophy (as elucidated by Hooker, Scheibe, Folse, Howard, Held, and others), on the other hand, was grounded in a seemingly different doctrine about the possibility of objective knowledge, namely the necessity of classical concepts. In fact, it follows from Raggio's Theorem in algebraic quantum theory that - within an appropriate class of physical theories - suitable mathematical translations of the doctrines of Bohr and Einstein are equivalent. Thus - upon our specific formalization - quantum mechanics accommodates Einstein's Trennungsprinzip if and only if it is interpreted a la Bohr through classical physics. Unfortunately, the protagonists themselves failed to discuss their differences in this constructive way, since their debate was dominated by Einstein's ingenious but ultimately flawed attempts to establish the "incompleteness" of quantum mechanics. This aspect of their debate may still be understood and appreciated, however, as reflecting a much deeper and insurmountable disagreement between Bohr and Einstein on the knowability of Nature. Using the theological controversy on the knowability of God as a analogy, Einstein was a Spinozist, whereas Bohr could be said to be on the side of Maimonides. Thus Einstein's off-the-cuff characterization of Bohr as a 'Talmudic philosopher' was spot-on.Comment: 22 pages. Argument sharpened and references update

Poisson spaces with a transition probability

The common structure of the space of pure states $P$ of a classical or a quantum mechanical system is that of a Poisson space with a transition probability. This is a topological space equipped with a Poisson structure, as well as with a function $p:P\times P-> [0,1]$, with certain properties. The Poisson structure is connected with the transition probabilities through unitarity (in a specific formulation intrinsic to the given context). In classical mechanics, where p(\rho,\sigma)=\dl_{\rho\sigma}, unitarity poses no restriction on the Poisson structure. Quantum mechanics is characterized by a specific (complex Hilbert space) form of $p$, and by the property that the irreducible components of $P$ as a transition probability space coincide with the symplectic leaves of $P$ as a Poisson space. In conjunction, these stipulations determine the Poisson structure of quantum mechanics up to a multiplicative constant (identified with Planck's constant). Motivated by E.M. Alfsen, H. Hanche-Olsen and F.W. Shultz ({\em Acta Math.} {\bf 144} (1980) 267-305) and F.W. Shultz ({\em Commun.\ Math.\ Phys.} {\bf 82} (1982) 497-509), we give axioms guaranteeing that $P$ is the space of pure states of a unital $C^*$-algebra. We give an explicit construction of this algebra from $P$.Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, many details adde

Lie groupoid C*-algebras and Weyl quantization

For any Lie groupoid $G$, the vector bundle $g^*$ dual to the associated Lie algebroid $g$ is canonically a Poisson manifold. The (reduced) C*-algebra of $G$ (as defined by A. Connes) is shown to be a strict quantization (in the sense of M. Rieffel) of $g^*$. This is proved using a generalization of Weyl's quantization prescription on flat space. Many other known strict quantizations are a special case of this procedure; on a Riemannian manifold, one recovers Connes' tangent groupoid as well as a recent generalization of Weyl's prescription. When $G$ is the gauge groupoid of a principal bundle one is led to the Weyl quantization of a particle moving in an external Yang-Mills field. In case that $G$ is a Lie group (with Lie algebra $g$) one recovers Rieffel's quantization of the Lie-Poisson structure on $g^*$. A transformation group C*-algebra defined by a smooth action of a Lie group on a manifold $Q$ turns out to be the quantization of the semidirect product Poisson manifold $g^*x Q$ defined by this action.Comment: 14 page

Quantization and the tangent groupoid

This is a survey of the relationship between C*-algebraic deformation quantization and the tangent groupoid in noncommutative geometry, emphasizing the role of index theory. We first explain how C*-algebraic versions of deformation quantization are related to the bivariant E-theory of Connes and Higson. With this background, we review how Weyl--Moyal quantization may be described using the tangent groupoid. Subsequently, we explain how the Baum--Connes analytic assembly map in E-theory may be seen as an equivariant version of Weyl--Moyal quantization. Finally, we expose Connes's tangent groupoid proof of the Atiyah--Singer index theoremComment: 16 pages, Proc. Constanta 200

Compact Quantum Groupoids

Quantum groupoids are a joint generalization of groupoids and quantum groups. We propose a definition of a compact quantum groupoid that is based on the theory of C*-algebras and Hilbert bimodules. The essential point is that whenever one has a tensor product over the complex numbers in the theory of quantum groups, one now uses a certain tensor product over the base algebra of the quantum groupoid.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in `Quantum Theory and Symmetries' (Goslar, 18-22 July 1999), eds. H.-D. Doebner et a