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.

Comments:	Submitted to a volume on Real Patterns (Tyler Milhouse, ed.), to be published by MIT Press
Subjects:	History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
Cite as:	arXiv:2410.15468 [physics.hist-ph]
	(or arXiv:2410.15468v1 [physics.hist-ph] for this version)
	https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.15468Focus to learn more

Submission history

From: Sean Carroll [view email]
[v1] Sun, 20 Oct 2024 18:45:11 UTC (145 KB)

[2410.15468] What Emergence Can Possibly Mean

https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.15468#

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November 11, 2024 / Philosophy / 21 Comments

Emergence is a centrally important concept in science and philosophy. Indeed, the existence of higher-level emergent properties helps render the world intelligible to us — we can sensibly understand the macroscopic world around us without a complete microscopic picture. But there are various different ways in which emergence might happen, and a tendency for definitions of emergence to rely on vague or subjective criteria. Recently Achyuth Parola and I wrote a paper trying to clear up some of these issues: What Emergence Can Possibly Mean. In this solo podcast I discuss the way we suggest to think about emergence, with examples from physics and elsewhere.