What Emergence Can Possibly Mean
History and Philosophy of Physics
2024-10-22 v1 Statistical Mechanics
Abstract
We consider emergence from the perspective of dynamics: states of a system evolving with time. We focus on the role of a decomposition of wholes into parts, and attempt to characterize relationships between levels without reference to whether higher-level properties are "novel" or "unexpected." We offer a classification of different varieties of emergence, with and without new ontological elements at higher levels.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2410.15468,
title = {What Emergence Can Possibly Mean},
author = {Sean M. Carroll and Achyuth Parola},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.15468},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
Submitted to a volume on Real Patterns (Tyler Milhouse, ed.), to be published by MIT Press