Manifest Background-independence
This is primarily an aesthetic rather than a physical requirement. It is analogous to requiring in differential geometry that equations be written in a form that is independent of the choice of charts and coordinate embeddings. If a background-independent formalism is present, it can lead to simpler and more elegant equations. However there is no physical content in requiring that a theory be manifestly background-independent – for example, the equations of general relativity can be rewritten in local coordinates without affecting the physical implications.
Read more about this topic: Background Independence
Famous quotes containing the word manifest:
“It matters little comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer’s barn. The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)