Lee Smolin

Theoretical physicist (Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario) and philosopher of physics. Author of Time Reborn (2013), The Trouble with Physics (2006, not in raw/), and The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time (2015, with Roberto Mangabeira Unger). Smolin's distinctive philosophical position is temporal naturalism / temporal relationalism: the thesis that time is real and fundamental — not derivable from a deeper, timeless level — and that space and the laws of physics arise from cosmological dynamics that generate, rather than presuppose, their symmetries.

In the wiki, Smolin is the principal contemporary physicist interlocutor in morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time, where Morris adopts Smolin's "unfreezing" of space and time as backgrounds and then deforms Smolin's neo-Leibnizian principle ("maximize difference") into Morris's own imperfecting-expression principle.

Key Points

  • Time is real, change is fundamental. Against the "timeless" interpretation of physics (Barbour's The End of Time is the foil), Smolin insists that time and change are real features of the universe and that the laws of physics themselves evolve over cosmic time.
  • Temporal relationalism / neo-Leibnizian model. In Temporal relationalism (2018, arXiv), Smolin develops a topological-monadic model: relational change-dynamics among monads, with the basic rule of maximize difference (against the Leibnizian identity of indiscernibles). The model generates space and locality as emergent rather than fundamental — locality is not absolute, just as Einstein showed simultaneity is not absolute.
  • Entanglement and non-locality as expressions of difference-maximization. Weird quantum phenomena (delayed choice, entanglement) on Smolin's reading are distributions of change that express, in spatio-temporal form, the maximizing of difference.
  • Singular universe, no multiverse. Smolin and Unger (2015) argue against the multiverse and timeless block-universe pictures: there is one universe with one history, in which time and change are real.
  • Critic of certain string-theoretic moves, particularly the claim to a "timeless" mathematical reality from which our temporal experience is somehow projected. Smolin reads the philosophical commitments of much contemporary fundamental physics as pre-Einsteinian in their conception of time as substance / framework.

Major Works (consulted indirectly via Morris 2024)

  • Smolin 2013: Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe, Toronto: Knopf Canada.
  • Smolin 2015: "Temporal naturalism," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 52: 86-102.
  • Smolin 2018: "Temporal relationalism," arXiv preprint https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018arXiv180512468S.
  • Smolin and Unger 2015: The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time, Cambridge University Press.

None are in raw/. The wiki's engagement with Smolin runs through Morris's interpretation, not through direct ingest.

Smolin in Morris's Reading

Morris adopts Smolin's framework — time as real, change as fundamental, space and locality as generated rather than presupposed — and then performs two deformations:

  1. Radicalize change. Smolin's monads are determinate identities in a topological network; Morris's "fundamental change" is indeterminate being, not yet a determinate identity. The Leibnizian determinate-identity bedrock is exactly what Morris's "Merleau-Bergsonian" framework refuses.

  2. Replace "maximize difference" with "imperfecting expression." Smolin's neo-Leibnizian rule generates entanglement and non-locality as expressions of difference-maximization. Morris reads the same phenomena as imperfections of perfect expression of causality — and argues that the imperfection is precisely what enables being to be indeterminate. The principle is not maximizing difference but imperfecting-expression.

The deformation matters because it shifts the philosophical register of Smolin's project from a (residually) Leibnizian determinate-identity ontology to a Merleau-Bergsonian indeterminate-being ontology. See morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time §6 and imperfecting-expression for the full development.

Connections

  • deformed by morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time — Morris adopts the temporal-naturalism framework but replaces "maximize difference" with "imperfecting expression."
  • converges with melting-time — Smolin's "unfreezing" of space and time backgrounds is the contemporary physics analogue of Morris's temps fondant.
  • reads against Barbour's timeless interpretation of physics. (Barbour entity not yet on the wiki; flagged for future creation if multiple sources warrant.)
  • builds on Einstein's relativization of simultaneity, extended to relativizing locality. (Einstein entity not yet on the wiki.)
  • contrasts with the Leibnizian identity of indiscernibles (which Smolin's "maximize difference" presupposes as the default).

Open Questions

  • Direct ingest of Temporal relationalism (2018) or Time Reborn (2013) would let the wiki engage Smolin without relying on Morris's mediation. The arXiv 2018 paper is the most direct articulation of the topological-monadic model that Morris deforms.
  • Smolin and phenomenology. Smolin's framework converges with phenomenological-temporal readings (Morris's claim) without Smolin himself being explicitly phenomenological. Whether this convergence is structural or coincidental warrants deeper investigation.
  • Relation to QBism. Morris reads QBism and Smolin as offering distinct (and possibly complementary) routes into a non-spatial-realist ontology. The relation Smolin↔QBism is not addressed by Morris directly.

Sources