Emergentism is a philosophical position which claims that there are properties and behaviors of entities in the world that are dependent on, but are not reducible to, the properties and behaviors of their constituent parts. This contrasts with reductionism concerning a particular phenomenon, which claims that reduction is possible there, and with dualism, which claims full autonomy of the higher level (see O’Connor 2021).
Emergence has long been debated in phenomena such as life and consciousness, but also regarding the chemical properties of water in relation to those of the constituent water molecules.
Emergentism in physics, which arose in response to the position of reductionism, which states that all of physics could be reduced to one basic universal theory.
In practice, emergentism is true, because even if one were to say the standard model of particle physics were to validate the reductionist paradigm, the Standard Model is so complex that particle physicists have not been able to model the dynamics of a single proton from the Standard Model, let alone the dynamics of molecules, chemical reactions, condensed matter systems, and galaxies. And furthermore, the complexity means that it is likely that even if humans could characterize such phenomena entirely based upon the Standard Model, it might be too long and complex for a single human to understand during their lifetime. This means that in practice, physicists usually have different theories for each different general phenomena; the quantum field theories used in condensed matter physics are effective field theories different from the Standard Model, and the models used in molecular chemistry and galactic physics aren’t quantum field theories at all.
reductionism, emergentism
On how ontological reductionism is problematic in the philosophy of science:
Daniel C. Dennett (1987) “True Believers.“ The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jimmy Aames (2019) Patternhood and Generality: A Peircean Approach to Emergence. European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI (2). (pdf, web)
A claim that condensed matter physics cannot be fully reduced to quantum mechanical theory for all the atoms of which the system consists:
On the use of mathematical tools, including exact sequences, to represent emergence (termed here generative and interactive effects:
On zeroth and first ‘homotopy posets’ to measure obstructions to compositionality:
Last revised on August 8, 2023 at 14:28:32. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.