ua nt - p h / 98 07 04 2 v 4 1 7 A ug 1 99 8 Realism or Locality : Which Should We Abandon ?

We reconsider the consequences of the observed violations of Bell’s inequalities. Two common responses to these violations are: (i) the rejection of realism and the retention of locality, and (ii) the rejection of locality and the retention of realism. Here we critique response (i). We argue that locality contains an implicit form of realism, since in a world view that embraces locality, spacetime, with its usual, fixed topology, has properties independent of measurement. Hence we argue that response (i) is incomplete, in that its rejection of realism is only partial. ∗On appointment as a Miller Research Professor in the Miller Institute for Basic Research in