The Co-Construction of Space and Time: A Way to Unify Classical Physics and Quantum Physics? A Relational Axiomatic System

The distinction between classical physics and quantum physics is traditionally analyzed based on concepts such as determinism, the continuous or discrete nature of variables, the non-commutativity of observables, and the superposition of states. This article proposes a more fundamental reinterpretation based on two complementary conceptual ingredients. The first is a minimal relational epistemology, developed from the author's previous work, in which space and time are not a priori frames but emerge from comparisons of movements between systems. The second is an analysis of the role played by the possibility—or impossibility—of defining independent events, a possibility that depends precisely on the prior construction of a spatio-temporal and causal structure. We show that the essential difference between classical physics and quantum physics lies in the rule of probability composition, and not in the features usually invoked. Quantum physics appears to be a coherent description of a physical regime prior to the establishment of the causal independence of events. The two conceptual ingredients are summarized in the form of axioms, broad enough to offer a new perspective on the usual notions of quantum physics, which we review here. Accompanying this text, another article presents more technical developments.