The physics of emergence / Robert C. Bishop.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bishop, Robert C., 1961- author.

Contributor:

Institute of Physics (Great Britain), publisher.

Series:

IOP (Series). Release 24.

IOP ebooks. 2024 collection.

[IOP release $release]

IOP ebooks. [2024 collection]

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Emergence (Philosophy).

Physics--Philosophy.

Local Subjects:

Emergence (Philosophy).

Physics--Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (various pagings) : illustrations (some color).

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Bristol [England] (Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol BS1 6HG, UK) : IOP Publishing, [2024]

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader, EPUB reader, or Kindle reader.

Biography/History:

Robert C Bishop is Professor of Physics and Philosophy and the John and Madeleine McIntyre Endowed Professor of Philosophy and History of Science at Wheaton College. His research focuses on History and philosophy of physics and the social sciences and free will, with special attention to emergence, determinism, chaos, and complexity. The Physics of Emergence (IOP Publishing, 2019), and Chaos Theory: A Quick Immersion (Tibidabo Publishing, 2023), and co-author of Emergence in Context: A Science-First Approach to Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Summary:

It is not unusual among particle physicists to find the belief that elementary particles and forces determine everything in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, physiology all the way up to human behaviour. It is not just that physics underlies everything in the universe; it is the belief that everything in the universe reduces to the play of elementary particles under forces. Yet, there are other physicists who argue that this is an oversimplification of the relationship between physics and other domains. This book explores these debates and proposes a physics-motivated conception of emergence that leaves behind many of the problematic intuitions shaping the philosophical conceptions. It would be suitable for physicists, scientists, undergraduate and postgraduate science students interested in reduction and emergence debates.

Contents:

1. Brief history of the debate

1.1. The modern emergentists

1.2. Einstein, Pauli, and Schrödinger

1.3. The return of emergence

1.4. Questioning the hierarchy

1.5. Weinberg and the response to P W Anderson

1.6. Universality and independence

1.7. Wheeler and the foundations of physics

1.8. Reductive methods versus reductionism

2. Some physics objections to emergence

2.1. Physics is fundamentally causally closed

2.2. Fundamental principles/laws govern everything

2.3. Emergent laws and properties are just coarse-grained averages of fundamental laws and properties

2.4. Symmetry is reduction

2.5. Coherence of physics and the sciences

2.6. Ontological emergence violates fundamental laws

2.7. Atomism, context and reductionism

2.8. Bare versus dressed states

3. Contextual emergence

3.1. A framework of conditions

3.2. Stability conditions

3.3. Contextual topologies and abstraction

3.4. Contextual topologies and contexts

3.5. Possibility spaces

3.6. Ontic/epistemic states and observables

4. Case studies from physics

4.1. Convection as a contextually-emergent state

4.2. Temperature as a contextually-emergent property

4.3. Molecular structure as a contextually-emergent property

4.4. Brief examples

5. The renormalization group and emergence

5.1. Renormalization group methods

5.2. Renormalization and contextual emergence

5.3. Renormalization, universality classes and physical systems

5.4. Renormalization, effective field theories and contextual emergence

6. Responding to objections

6.1. Physics is fundamentally causally closed

6.2. Fundamental principles/laws govern everything

6.3. Emergent laws and properties are just coarse-grained averages of fundamental laws and properties

6.4. Symmetry is reduction

6.5. Coherence of physics and the sciences

6.6. Ontological emergence violates fundamental laws

6.7. Atomism, context and reductionism

6.8. Is it all just boundary conditions?

6.9. Everything is in the fundamental domain

7. Broader implications

7.1. Redefining fundamentality

7.2. Contextual emergence of the macroscopic

7.3. Implications for the universal wave function

7.4. Laws of nature

7.5. Determinism

7.6. Contextual emergence beyond physics

7.7. Conclusion.

Notes:

"Version: 20240701"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references.

Title from PDF title page (viewed on August 1, 2024).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9780750363679

9780750363662

OCLC:

1451140015

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.