Abstract

In this paper I analyse two closely related examples of duality and of emergence of gravity, namely AdS/CFT and Verlinde's scheme. Based on the notion of duality introduced in Dieks et al., I here elaborate on the conditions necessary for AdS/CFT to be a duality, in particular the condition of completeness. I also address what is usually seen as a desideratum for any candidate theory of quantum gravity: the background-independence of the theory and the diffeomorphism invariance of the observables. Then I discuss Verlinde's scheme and the extent to which it gives a clear case of emergence of gravity. Finally, I give a novel derivation of the Bekenstein-Hawking black hole entropy formula based on Verlinde's scheme.