Emergence, causation and storytelling: condensed matter physics and the limitations of the human mind

📝 Abstract

The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and restrict the way in which we can interact with and learn about the universe. This presents challenges for developing scientific explanations that are met by emergent narratives, concepts and arguments that have a non-trivial relationship to the underlying microphysics. By examining examples within condensed matter physics, and also from cellular automata, I show how such emergent narratives efficiently describe elements of reality.

💡 Analysis

The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and restrict the way in which we can interact with and learn about the universe. This presents challenges for developing scientific explanations that are met by emergent narratives, concepts and arguments that have a non-trivial relationship to the underlying microphysics. By examining examples within condensed matter physics, and also from cellular automata, I show how such emergent narratives efficiently describe elements of reality.

📄 Content

1 Emergence, causation and storytelling: condensed matter physics and the limitations of the human mind

Stephen J. Blundell University of Oxford, Department of Physics, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK

Abstract

The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and restrict the way in which we can interact with and learn about the universe.
This presents challenges for developing scientific explanations that are met by emergent narratives, concepts and arguments that have a non-trivial relationship to the underlying microphysics. By examining examples within condensed matter physics, and also from cellular automata, I show how such emergent narratives efficiently describe elements of reality.

1. Introduction

The subject of emergence has become of interest to philosophers (see O’ Connor and Wong, 2015), and much has been written in aid of teasing out different types of emergent behaviour. A distinction is often made between weak’ and strong’ emergence, sometimes called epistemological’ or ontological’ emergence respectively, although different authors define these terms in slightly contrasting ways. Essentially, the distinction is between an emergence that is constructed in terms of the limits of human knowledge and one that is fundamentally irreducible, representing a new element of reality. For example, in the weakly emergent case, a macroscopic state can still be determined from the microscopic physics, but viably only through computer simulations that can crunch through repeated iteration of the low-level laws (Bedau, 1997). Thus it might be only difficult and cumbersome to go from the lower level explanation (the microscopic world) to the upper level (the macroscopic world), but not completely impossible. In the strongly emergent case on the other hand, the higher level is fundamentally irreducible to the lower level (Kim 1999), and new ‘causal powers’ are invoked which act ‘downward’. Some philosophers seem to feel that the strong version is where the real philosophical meat is. Thus it is thought to be “the most interesting and important kind of emergence” (Silbertstein and McGeever 1999). Of course, such a `strong emergent’ approach appears to best target their holy-grail problem, namely the determination of the nature of the conscious mind, which some wish to be wholly irreducible to physiological neural states (O’Connor and Wong 2005). Thus if I decide to act in the world, perhaps making up my mind to switch on an electric kettle, my

2 strongly emergent consciousness (higher level) is imagined to downwardly cause a resultant state of (lower level) molecular motion in the heated water.

Strong emergence has however been described as “uncomfortably like magic’’ (Bedau, 1997) and most scientists have an instinctive aversion to it. Why shouldn’t it be possible, in principle, even if not feasible in practice, to describe the entire process of me deciding to switch on a kettle and the resultant jiggling of H2O molecules all at the micro-level (neural and molecular processes) in a seamless whole? Scientists are perhaps expected to express such reductionist sentiments that would then predispose them against emergence, so the current popularity of the topic amongst physicists might be surprising. The word ‘emergence’ now frequently appears in the titles of research papers in condensed matter physics (in the last decade “emergence” or “emergent” has appeared in the title of well over a hundred papers in the journal Physical Review Letters).
Some of the most vocal advocates of emergence have been condensed matter physicists (Anderson 1972, Laughlin and Pines 2000, Laughlin 2005). The Oxford English Dictionary defines emergence as the “process of coming forth, issuing from concealment”, and this appearance or manifestation of something that was previously buried or hidden from view captures the sense of the word as used by physicists. Emergent properties are somehow inherent in the underlying microscopics, but not in any obvious or easily extractable manner, and their appearance is wonderful, surprising and pointing to higher-level organizing principles that operate at a new level. But are these higher-level organizing principles simply weak emergence?

Some string theorists in fact reject the idea that emergent principles represent new physics at all, even though they might be important for practical purposes.
Brian Greene states that although “it would be hard to explain the properties of a tornado in terms of the physics of electrons and quarks, I see this as a matter of calculational impasse, not an indicator of the need for new physical laws. But again, there are some who disagree with this view.” (Greene 20

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