Related papers: Emergence, Reduction and Supervenience: a Varied L…
Is reduction always a good scientific strategy? Does it always lead to a gain in information? The very existence of the special sciences above and beyond physics seems to hint no. Previous research has shown that dimension reduction…
When a large number of similar entities interact among each other and with their environment at a low scale, unexpected outcomes at higher spatio-temporal scales might spontaneously arise. This nontrivial phenomenon, known as emergence,…
The broad concept of emergence is instrumental in various of the most challenging open scientific questions -- yet, few quantitative theories of what constitutes emergent phenomena have been proposed. This article introduces a formal theory…
Dualities offer new possibilities for relating fundamentality and emergence. In particular, as is the aim of this chapter to show, it may happen that the relations of fundamentality and emergence between dual theories are inverted. In other…
The relationship that is widely presumed to hold between physical theories and their successors, in which the successors in some sense explain the success of the theories they replace, is known commonly as 'reduction.' I argue that one…
"Emergence", the phenomenon where a complex system displays properties, behaviours, or dynamics not trivially reducible to its constituent elements, is one of the defining properties of complex systems. Recently, there has been a concerted…
As Physics did in previous centuries, there is currently a common dream of extracting generic laws of nature in economics, sociology, neuroscience, by focalising the description of phenomena to a minimal set of variables and parameters,…
We discuss the applicability of the programme of decoherence -- emergence of approximate classical behaviour through interaction with the environment -- to cases where it was suggested that the presence of symmetries would lead to exact…
Non-deductive reasoning systems are often {\em representation dependent}: representing the same situation in two different ways may cause such a system to return two different answers. Some have viewed this as a significant problem. For…
The concept of emergence is a powerful concept to explain very complex behaviour by simple underling rules. Existing approaches of producing emergent collective behaviour have many limitations making them unable to account for the…
The pros and cons of various forms of atomism and holism that are applicable both in physical science and today's philosophy of nature are evaluated. To this end, Lewis' thesis of Humean supervenience is presented as an important case study…
Emergence is a profound subject that straddles many scientific disciplines, including the formation of galaxies and how consciousness arises from the collective activity of neurons. Despite the broad interest that exists on this concept,…
A sketch of three senses of emergence and a suggestive view on the emergence of time and the direction of time is presented. After trying to identify which issues philosophers interested in emergent phenomena in physics view as important I…
We identify emergence with the existence of states of potentiality related to relevant physical quantities. We introduce the concept of 'potentiality state' operationally and show how it reduces to 'superposition state' when standard…
Reductionism has dominated science and philosophy for centuries. Complexity has recently shown that interactions---which reductionism neglects---are relevant for understanding phenomena. When interactions are considered, reductionism…
This thesis is situated within the context of quantum gravity, broadly understood as any effort to explore the interplay between gravitation and the quantum realm, without necessarily requiring the quantization of the gravitational field…
The term emergence is increasingly used across scientific disciplines to describe phenomena that arise from interactions among a system's components but cannot be readily inferred by examining those components in isolation. While often…
Emergence is a phenomenon taken for granted in science but also still not well understood. We have developed a model of artificial genetic evolution intended to allow for emergence on genetic, population and social levels. We present the…
Motivated by a generalization of Hempel's dilemma, I introduce a novel notion of empirical structure, as well as theory supervenience as a new reductive relationship between theories. One theory supervenes on another theory if the empirical…
Emergent behavior that appears at a given level of organization may be characterized as arising from an organizationally lower level in such a way that it transcends a mere increase in the behavioral degree of complexity. It is therefore to…