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LIT-389: Some Possible Roles for Topos Theory in Quantum Theory and Quantum Gravity

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Properties5
StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-01 (NOTE-334); worth reading only as the programme's short, informal manifesto as of 1999, written before parts III–IV appeared. It joins the Kochen–Specker valuations to the continuum scepticism (real-valued quantities, space and probabilities) that the Döring–Isham programme later develops, and the Literalism/Extra-Values framing appears nowhere else in the record. Its one technical section is a recap of KS I–II, and a reader of LIT-325, LIT-381 and LIT-378 loses little by skipping it.
Version2
Tagsquantum-foundations, mathematics, logic, philosophy-of-science, contextuality
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-334 — Some Possible Roles for Topos Theory in Quantum Theory and Quantum Gravity
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-516 — For any presheaf of propositions over a small category of contexts, a sieve-valued valuation satisfies the generalized functional-composition condition exactly when it is a subobject of that presheaf, and the construction runs unchanged in classical physics, where every microstate gives a global section yet truth values are still non-Boolean sieves; so the logic of the truth values is fixed by the base category, not by whether a presheaf has global sections

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Isham & Butterfield (1999), Foundations of Physics 30(10), 1707–1735 (October 2000), Festschrift issue for Maria Luisa (Marisa) Dalla Chiara; title, authors, volume, issue and pages confirmed against Crossref and arXiv — arXiv:gr-qc/9910005

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-01 at the owner’s request. published: is the first appearance (ADR-002).

It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-334 is the close reading of 2026-10-01, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading only as the programme’s short, informal manifesto as of 1999, written before parts III–IV appeared. It joins the Kochen–Specker valuations to the continuum scepticism (real-valued quantities, space and probabilities) that the Döring–Isham programme later develops, and the Literalism/Extra-Values framing appears nowhere else in the record. Its one technical section is a recap of KS I–II, and a reader of LIT-325, LIT-381 and LIT-378 loses little by skipping it.

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