Related papers: More Really is Different
While fields like Artificial Life have made huge strides in quantifying the mechanisms that distinguish living systems from non-living ones, particular mechanisms remain difficult to reproduce in silico. Known as open-endedness, we've been…
The rich body of physical theories defines the foundation of our understanding of the world. Its mathematical formulation is based on classical Aristotelian (binary) logic. In the philosophy of science the ambiguities, paradoxes, and the…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that all isolated macroscopic systems must be in want of ever greater disorder, with due apologies to Jane Austen for plagiarizing the opening line in her novel {\it Pride and Prejudice}. This common,…
Complex macroscopic behaviour can arise in many-body systems with only very simple elements as a consequence of the combination of competition and inhomogeneity. This paper attempts to illustrate how statistical physics has driven this…
This is a companion to another paper. Together they rebut two widespread philosophical doctrines about emergence. The first, and main, doctrine is that emergence is incompatible with reduction. The second is that emergence is supervenience;…
Complex systems exhibit macroscopic behaviors that emerge from the coordinated interactions of their individual components. Understanding the microscopic origins of these emergent properties remains a significant challenge, especially in…
P.W. Anderson proposed the concept of complexity in order to describe the emergence and growth of macroscopic collective patterns out of the simple interactions of many microscopic agents. In the physical sciences this paradigm was…
Understanding realistic complex systems requires confronting significant conceptual, theoretical and experimental limitations rooted in the persistence of views that originated in the mechanics of simple moving bodies. We define the…
Equilibrium is a rather ideal situation, the exception rather than the rule in Nature. Whenever the external or internal parameters of a physical system are varied its subsequent relaxation to equilibrium may be either impossible or take…
In the late seventies an increasing interest in the scaling theory of Anderson localization led to new efforts to understand the conductance of systems which scatter electrons elastically. The conductance and its relation to the scattering…
The present paper presents a new general conception of interaction between physical systems, differing significantly from that of both classical physics and quantum physics as generally understood. We believe this conception could provide…
Several recent experiments in biology study systems composed of several interacting elements, for example neuron networks. Normally, measurements describe only the collective behavior of the system, even if in most cases we would like to…
The basic characteristics of the classical many-particle (''macroscopic'') systems are notoriously hard to reproduce in quantum theory. In this paper we show that this is not the case for certain many-particle systems within the recently…
This paper is concerned with complex macroscopic behaviour arising in many-body systems through the combinations of competitive interactions and disorder, even with simple ingredients at the microscopic level. It attempts to indicate and…
Recently it has been demonstrated that causal entropic forces can lead to the emergence of complex phenomena associated with human cognitive niche such as tool use and social cooperation. Here I show that even more fundamental traits…
We present several philosophical ideas emerging from the studies of complex systems. We make a brief introduction to the basic concepts of complex systems, for then defining "abstraction levels". These are useful for representing…
We critically analyse the point of view for which laws of nature are just a mean to compress data. Discussing some basic notions of dynamical systems and information theory, we show that the idea that the analysis of large amount of data by…
Quantum mechanics marks a radical departure from the classical understanding of Nature, fostering an inherent randomness which forbids a deterministic description; yet the most fundamental departure arises from something different. As shown…
The physical processes that determine the properties of our everyday world, and of the wider cosmos, are determined by some key numbers: the 'constants' of micro-physics and the parameters that describe the expanding universe in which we…
The one-dimensional transverse Ising model is a paradigmatic example of quantum criticality. In spin-orbit coupled systems, however, effective Ising interactions arise alongside bond-dependent couplings such as Kitaev ($K$) and $\Gamma$…