The Physics of Emergence
The Physics of Emergence

Author: Robert C Bishop

Publisher: Morgan & Claypool Publishers

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 1643271563

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A standard view of elementary particles and forces is that they determine everything else in the rest of physics, the whole of chemistry, biology, geology, physiology and perhaps even human behavior. This reductive view of physics is popular among some physicists. Yet, there are other physicists who argue this is an oversimplified and that the relationship of elementary particle physics to these other domains is one of emergence. Several objections have been raised from physics against proposals for emergence (e.g., that genuinely emergent phenomena would violate the standard model of elementary particle physics, or that genuine emergence would disrupt the lawlike order physics has revealed). Many of these objections rightly call into question typical conceptions of emergence found in the philosophy literature. This book explores whether physics points to a reductive or an emergent structure of the world and proposes a physics-motivated conception of emergence that leaves behind many of the problematic intuitions shaping the philosophical conceptions. Examining several detailed case studies reveal that the structure of physics and the practice of physics research are both more interesting than is captured in this reduction/emergence debate. The results point to stability conditions playing a crucial though underappreciated role in the physics of emergence. This contextual emergence has thought-provoking consequences for physics and beyond, and will be of interest to physics students, researchers, as well as those interested in physics.

Physics Of Emergence And Organization
Physics Of Emergence And Organization

Author: Ignazio Licata

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2008-06-09

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9814472158

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This book is a state-of-the-art review on the Physics of Emergence. The challenge of complexity is to focus on the description levels of the observer in context-dependent situations. Emergence is not only an heuristic approach to complexity, but it also urges us to face a much deeper question — what do we think is fundamental in the physical world?This volume provides significant and pioneering contributions based on rigorous physical and mathematical approaches — with particular reference to the syntax of Quantum Physics and Quantum Field Theory — dealing with the bridge-laws and their limitations between Physics and Biology, without failing to discuss the involved epistemological features.Physics of Emergence and Organization is an interdisciplinary source of reference for students and experts whose interests cross over to complexity issues.

On the Emergence Theme of Physics
On the Emergence Theme of Physics

Author: Robert Carroll

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9814291803

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The book surveys mathematical relations between classical and quantum mechanics, gravity, time and thermodynamics from various points of view and many sources (with appropriate attribution). The emergence theme is developed with an emphasis on the meaning via mathematics. A background theme of Bohemian mechanics and connections to the quantum equivalence principle of Matone et al. is also developed in great detail. Some original work relating the quantum potential and Ricci flow is also included.

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe

Author: Sean Carroll

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-09-20

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0593186583

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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Most appealing... technical accuracy and lightness of tone... Impeccable.”—Wall Street Journal “A porthole into another world.”—Scientific American “Brings science dissemination to a new level.”—Science The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions entertaining, presents in his uniquely lucid voice the fundamental ideas informing the modern physics of reality. Physics offers deep insights into the workings of the universe but those insights come in the form of equations that often look like gobbledygook. Sean Carroll shows that they are really like meaningful poems that can help us fly over sierras to discover a miraculous multidimensional landscape alive with radiant giants, warped space-time, and bewilderingly powerful forces. High school calculus is itself a centuries-old marvel as worthy of our gaze as the Mona Lisa. And it may come as a surprise the extent to which all our most cutting-edge ideas about black holes are built on the math calculus enables. No one else could so smoothly guide readers toward grasping the very equation Einstein used to describe his theory of general relativity. In the tradition of the legendary Richard Feynman lectures presented sixty years ago, this book is an inspiring, dazzling introduction to a way of seeing that will resonate across cultural and generational boundaries for many years to come.

The Emergence of Spacetime in String Theory
The Emergence of Spacetime in String Theory

Author: Tiziana Vistarini

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-12

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1134842406

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The nature of space and time is one of the most fascinating and fundamental philosophical issues which presently engages at the deepest level with physics. During the last thirty years this notion has been object of an intense critical review in the light of new scientific theories which try to combine the principles of both general relativity and quantum theory—called theories of quantum gravity. This book considers the way string theory shapes its own account of spacetime disappearance from the fundamental level.

Emergence
Emergence

Author: Mark Bedau

Publisher: MIT Press (MA)

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13:

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Readings on the idea of emergence in evolution and classical works on emergence found in contemporary philosophy and science. Australian contributor.

Emergence in Science and Philosophy
Emergence in Science and Philosophy

Author: Antonella Corradini

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-06-18

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1136955127

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The concept of emergence has seen a significant resurgence in philosophy and the sciences, yet debates regarding emergentist and reductionist visions of the natural world continue to be hampered by imprecision or ambiguity. Emergent phenomena are said to arise out of and be sustained by more basic phenomena, while at the same time exerting a "top-down" control upon those very sustaining processes. To some critics, this has the air of magic, as it seems to suggest a kind of circular causality. Other critics deem the concept of emergence to be objectionably anti-naturalistic. Objections such as these have led many thinkers to construe emergent phenomena instead as coarse-grained patterns in the world that, while calling for distinctive concepts, do not "disrupt" the ordinary dynamics of the finer-grained (more fundamental) levels. Yet, reconciling emergence with a (presumed) pervasive causal continuity at the fundamental level can seem to deflate emergence of its initially profound significance. This basic problematic is mirrored by similar controversy over how best to characterize the opposite systematizing impulse, most commonly given an equally evocative but vague term, "reductionism." The original essays in this volume help to clarify the alternatives: inadequacies in some older formulations and arguments are exposed and new lines of argument on behalf the two visions are advanced.

A World Beyond Physics
A World Beyond Physics

Author: Stuart A. Kauffman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-04-01

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0190871342

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How did life start? Is the evolution of life describable by any physics-like laws? Stuart Kauffman's latest book offers an explanation-beyond what the laws of physics can explain-of the progression from a complex chemical environment to molecular reproduction, metabolism and to early protocells, and further evolution to what we recognize as life. Among the estimated one hundred billion solar systems in the known universe, evolving life is surely abundant. That evolution is a process of "becoming" in each case. Since Newton, we have turned to physics to assess reality. But physics alone cannot tell us where we came from, how we arrived, and why our world has evolved past the point of unicellular organisms to an extremely complex biosphere. Building on concepts from his work as a complex systems researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, Kauffman focuses in particular on the idea of cells constructing themselves and introduces concepts such as "constraint closure." Living systems are defined by the concept of "organization" which has not been focused on in enough in previous works. Cells are autopoetic systems that build themselves: they literally construct their own constraints on the release of energy into a few degrees of freedom that constitutes the very thermodynamic work by which they build their own self creating constraints. Living cells are "machines" that construct and assemble their own working parts. The emergence of such systems-the origin of life problem-was probably a spontaneous phase transition to self-reproduction in complex enough prebiotic systems. The resulting protocells were capable of Darwin's heritable variation, hence open-ended evolution by natural selection. Evolution propagates this burgeoning organization. Evolving living creatures, by existing, create new niches into which yet further new creatures can emerge. If life is abundant in the universe, this self-constructing, propagating, exploding diversity takes us beyond physics to biospheres everywhere.

Emergence
Emergence

Author: Mariusz Tabaczek

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 531

ISBN-13: 0268105006

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Over the last several decades, the theories of emergence and downward causation have become arguably the most popular conceptual tools in scientific and philosophical attempts to explain the nature and character of global organization observed in various biological phenomena, from individual cell organization to ecological systems. The theory of emergence acknowledges the reality of layered strata or levels of systems, which are consequences of the appearance of an interacting range of novel qualities. A closer analysis of emergentism, however, reveals a number of philosophical problems facing this theory. In Emergence, Mariusz Tabaczek offers a thorough analysis of these problems and a constructive proposal of a new metaphysical foundation for both the classic downward causation-based and the new dynamical depth accounts of emergence theory, developed by Terrence Deacon. Tabaczek suggests ways in which both theoretical models of emergentism can be grounded in the classical and the new (dispositionalist) versions of Aristotelianism. This book will have an eager audience in metaphysicians working both in the analytic and the Thomistic traditions, as well as philosophers of science and biology interested in emergence theory and causation.

Effective Spacetime
Effective Spacetime

Author: Karen Crowther

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-07

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 3319395084

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This book discusses the notion that quantum gravity may represent the "breakdown" of spacetime at extremely high energy scales. If spacetime does not exist at the fundamental level, then it has to be considered "emergent", in other words an effective structure, valid at low energy scales. The author develops a conception of emergence appropriate to effective theories in physics, and shows how it applies (or could apply) in various approaches to quantum gravity, including condensed matter approaches, discrete approaches, and loop quantum gravity.