NDPR Christian Wüthrich and Nick Huggett Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Theories of Quantum Gravity

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2026.04.7 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Christian Wüthrich and Nick Huggett, Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Theories of Quantum Gravity, Oxford University Press, 2025, 384pp., $115.00 (hbk) ISBN 9780198758501.

Reviewed by Álvaro Mozota Frauca, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Could spacetime appear from something non-spatiotemporal? Different approaches to quantum gravity seem to suggest so, and Christian Wüthrich and Nick Huggett have been trying to understand how for more than 25 years now. Along the way, they have produced high-quality publications and organized research projects, workshops, and conferences that have attracted the attention of the philosophy of physics community to a highly technical, yet philosophically rich area. Their book Out of Nowhere condenses this work in a very readable way, making it accessible and valuable to both newcomers and experts. Throughout the book, Wüthrich and Huggett argue that it is possible...