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Series:   Elements in the Philosophy of Physics

Emergence and Reduction in Physics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2022

Patricia Palacios
Patricia Palacios
Affiliation:
University of Salzburg

Summary

This Element offers an overview of some of the most important debates in philosophy and physics around the topics of emergence and reduction and proposes a compatibilist view of emergence and reduction. In particular, it suggests that specific notions of emergence, which the author calls 'few-many emergence' and 'coarse-grained emergence', are compatible with 'intertheoretic reduction'. Some further issues that will be addressed concern the comparison between parts-whole emergence and few-many emergence, the emergence of effective (-field) theories, the use of infinite limits, the notion of intertheoretic reduction and the explanation of universal and cooperative behavior. Although the focus will be principally on classical phase transitions and other examples from condensed matter physics, the main aim is to draw some general conclusions on the topics of emergence and reduction that can help us understand a variety of case-studies ranging from high-energy physics to astrophysics.
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Keywords

emergencereductionintertheoretic reductionrenormalization group methodscritical phenomena
Type
Element
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Series: Elements in the Philosophy of Physics
Online ISBN: 9781108901017
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 06 October 2022

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