We show that three fundamental information-theoretic constraints—the impossibility of superluminal information transfer between two physical systems by performing measurements on one of them, the impossibility of broadcasting the information contained in an unknown physical state, and the impossibility of unconditionally secure bit commitment—suffice to entail that the observables and state space of a physical theory are quantum-mechanical. We demonstrate the converse derivation in part, and consider the implications of alternative answers to a remaining open question about nonlocality and bit commitment. KEY WORDS: quantum theory; information-theoretic constraints. Of John Wheeler’s ‘‘Really Big Questions,’ ’ the one on which most progress has been made is It from Bit?—does information play a significant role at the foundations of physics? It is perhaps less ambitious than some of the other Questions, such as How Come Existence?, because it does not necessarily require a metaphysical answer. And unlike, say, Why the Quantum?, it does not require the discovery of new laws of nature: there was room for hope that it might be answered through a better understanding of the laws as we currently know them, particularly those of quantum physics. And this is what has happened: the better understanding is the quantum theory of information and computation. 1

this paper a new approach to the problem of constructing a quantum theory of gravity in the cosmological context is proposed. It is founded on results from four separate directions of investigation, which are: 1) A new point of view towards the interpretation problem in quantum cosmology[1, 2, 3, 4], which rejects the idea that a single quantum state, or a single Hilbert space, can provide a complete description of a closed system like the universe. Instead, the idea is to accept Bohr's original proposal that the quantum state requires for its interpretation a context in which we distinguish two subsystems of the universe-the quantum system and observer. However, we seek to relativize this split, so that the boundary between the part of the universe that is considered the system and that which might be considered the observer may be chosen arbitrarily. The idea is then that a quantum theory of cosmology is specified by giving an assignment of a Hilbert space and algebra of observables to every possible boundary that can be considered to split the universe into two such subsystems. A quantum state of the universe is then an assignment of a statistical state to every one of these Hilbert spaces, subject to certain conditions of consistency. Each of these states is interpreted to contain the information that an observer on one side of each boundary might have about the system of the other side. This formulation then accepts the idea that each observer can only have incomplete information about the universe, so that the most complete description possible of the universe is given by the whole collection of incomplete, but mutually compatible quantum state descriptions of all the possible observers. At the same time, the information of different observers is, to some extent, ...

Quantum theory has provoked intense discussions about its interpretation since its pioneer days, beginning with Bohr’s view of quantum theory as a theory of knowledge. We show that such an epistemic perspective can be consistently complemented by Einstein’s ontically oriented position.

The aim of this article is to analyse the relation between the second law of thermodynamics and the so-called arrow of time. For this purpose, a number of different aspects in this arrow of time are distinguished, in particular those of time-(a)symmetry and of (ir)reversibility. Next I review versions of the second law in the work of Carnot, Clausius, Kelvin, Planck, Gibbs, Carathéodory and Lieb and Yngvason, and investigate their connection with these aspects of the arrow of time. It is shown that this connection varies a great deal along with these formulations of the second law. According to the famous formulation by Planck, the second law expresses the irreversibility of natural processes. But in many other formulations irreversibility or even time-asymmetry plays no role. I therefore argue for the view that the second law has nothing to do with the arrow of time.

“O! immodest mortal! Your destiny is the joy of watching the evershifting battle!” Ludwig Boltzmann 1 1

This paper investigates what the source of time-asymmetry is in thermodynamics, and comments on the question whether a time-symmetric formulation of the Second Law is possible.

I argue that quantum mechanics is fundamentally a theory about the representation and manipulation of information, not a theory about the mechanics of nonclassical waves or particles. The notion of quantum information is to be understood as a new physical primitive—just as, following Einstein’s special theory of relativity, a field is no longer regarded as the physical manifestation of vibrations in a mechanical medium, but recognized as a new physical primitive in its own right. 1

In this critical notice we argue against William Craig’s recent attempt to reconcile presentism (roughly, the view that only the present is real) with relativity theory. Craig’s defense of his position boils down to endorsing a “neo-Lorentzian interpretation ” of special relativity. We contend that his reconstruction of Lorentz’s theory and its historical development is fatally flawed and that his arguments for reviving this theory fail on many counts.

This Chapter deals with theoretical developments in the subject of quantum information and quantum computation, and includes an overview of classical information and some relevant quantum mechanics. The discussion covers topics in quantum communication, quantum cryptography, and quantum computation, and concludes by considering whether a perspective in terms of quantum information

In dealing with emergent phenomena, a common task is to identify useful descriptions of them in terms of the underlying atomic processes, and to extract enough computational content from these descriptions to enable predictions to be made. Generally, the underlying atomic processes are quite well understood, and (with important exceptions) captured by mathematics from which it is relatively easy to extract algorithmic content. A widespread view is that the difficulty in describing transitions from algorithmic activity to the emergence associated with chaotic situations is a simple case of complexity outstripping computational resources and human ingenuity. Or, on the other hand, that phenomena transcending the standard Turing model of computation, if they exist, must necessarily lie outside the domain of classical computability theory. In this talk we suggest that much of the current confusion arises from conceptual gaps and the lack of a suitably fundamental model within which to situate emergence. We examine the potential for placing emergent relations in a familiar context based on Turing’s 1939 model for interactive computation over structures described in terms of reals. The explanatory power of this model is explored, formalising informal descriptions in terms of mathematical definability and invariance, and relating a range of basic scientific puzzles to results and intractable problems in computability theory. In this talk