ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a review of canonical gravity and a brief discussion of minisuperspace methods. It looks at how to derive the covariant path integral from the canonical formulation, and looks at the issue of the failure of gravitation theories to be renormalizable even though semi-classically they can be used to make some physical predictions. The chapter describes some of the interesting problems posed by the fact that black holes are quantum mechanically unstable by virtue of their Hawking temperature. It discusses string theory which presently seems to be the best, or perhaps only, candidate for a theory of gravity that is consistent with the ideas of quantum mechanics. There is, of course, much more to quantum gravity than can be contained in these lectures. The very first step in the construction of a quantum theory based on a given classical theory is to identify the correct action.
