After a brief introduction to issues that plague the realization of a theory
of quantum gravity, I suggest that the main one concerns a quantization of the
principle of relative simultaneity. This leads me to a distinction between time
and space, to a further degree than that present in the canonical approach to
general relativity. With this distinction, one can make sense of superpositions
as interference between alternative paths in the relational configuration space
of the entire Universe. But the full use of relationalism brings us to a
timeless picture of Nature, as it does in the canonical approach (which
culminates in the Wheeler-DeWitt equation). After a discussion of Parmenides
and the Eleatics' rejection of time, I show that there is middle ground between
their view of absolute timelessness and a view of physics taking place in
timeless configuration space. In this middle ground, even though change does
not fundamentally exist, the illusion of change can be recovered in a way not
permitted by Parmenides. It is recovered through a particular density
distribution over configuration space which gives rise to 'records'.
Incidentally, this distribution seems to have the potential to dissolve further
aspects of the measurement problem that can still be argued to haunt the
application of decoherence to Many-Worlds quantum mechanics. I end with a
discussion indicating that the conflict between the conclusions of this paper
and our view of the continuity of the self may still intuitively bother us.
Nonetheless, those conclusions should be no more challenging to our intuition
than Derek Parfit's thought experiments on the subject.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure. Winner of the essay contest: "Space-time after
quantum gravity" (University of Illinois and Universit\'e de Geneve). To be
published in special editio
