English

On emergence from the perspective of physical science

History and Philosophy of Physics 2021-01-19 v3

Abstract

In this paper, we summarize the development of the concept of emergence in physical science and propose key concepts of emergence in the form of conjectures. Our conjectures are threefold: I. A system having a broken-symmetry in membership relation with respect to micro and macro scales can have emergent properties. II. Spontaneous symmetry-breaking is an example of an emergent property. III. The phenomenon of hysteresis accompanies spontaneous symmetry-breaking. We argue that these conjectures and their relationship can illuminate the concept of emergence from the perspective of symmetry breaking.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1705.11075,
  title  = {On emergence from the perspective of physical science},
  author = {Joon-Young Moon and Eric LaRock},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1705.11075},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

14 pages, 2 figures