Chapter XII: Reductionism And Emergence | The Philosophy Of Science by Steven Gussman [1st Edition]

        “What Is Life?”

        – Erwin SchrödingerI


        “But everything looks perfect
        from far away
        Come down now
        but we'll stay.”
        – Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello (The Postal Service)II


        Reductionism is the fact that all phenomena except the most fundamental physics must be understood as being built up of such simpler things.  Emergence is the other side of the reductionism coin: again, the fact that all phenomena (except the most fundamental physics) must have arisen from lower phenomena (ultimately from fundamental physics).  Emergence is often misconstrued even by scientists (who are barking up the wrong tree) so as to mean phenomena which cannot, even in principle, be understood in terms of their underlying physics (nor any intermediary)—I call this fallacy irreducible emergence.III  In this world, one can actually be greater than the sum of one's parts, which of course breaks the laws of logic and mathematics in the real world.  This may also be called “top-down causality”, which confuses the ontological stack for a dynamic phenomena: when we say that physics “gives rise” to chemistry, we do not actually mean that if one were to watch a chemical reaction in slow-motion, that something that could only be regarded as physics over time becomes something that may only be regarded as chemistry.  The ontological stack is static (non-dynamic); it is simply a lens (the higher the resolution, the lower one goes down on the stack) through which to view the world: a chemical process is also a physical process (though not all physical processes are chemical processes).IV  This has nothing to do with causality, it has only to do with at what level of abstraction one wants to view the phenomenon (in this case, in terms of complex physics, or elegant chemistry).V  The chemical view of the phenomenon is not “caused” by the physical view of it; both descriptions are equally true simultaneously (though a lower level abstraction subsumes the information in the higher-level view of the phenomenon while adding more detail back in, which is viewed as noise in the higher abstraction).  Incidentally, it is true that during the dynamic evolution of the cosmos, physical processes caused the chemical processes to arise, chemical processes caused biological processes to arise, biological processes caused psychological process to arise, and that psychological processes caused sociological processes to arise—again, as a matter of cosmic history.VI  These are related but different statements which should not be conflated.  The static fact that all biological phenomena could in-principle be described in terms of their constituent chemistry is related to but different from the dynamic fact that when life arose on Earth, it must have begun in some chemical process.  In both cases, there is no causation in the other diction: in the first case, there is no causation, so it makes no sense to claim, for example, that a biological phenomenon may escape its chemical underpinnings and even change them.  Conversely, chemistry already existed so as to give rise to the genesis of biological life on Earth, and while life may have all sorts of chemical consequences in the environment, it cannot change the laws of chemistry (let alone physics).  The proper construal is reducible emergence.VII

        I call the successive levels of observation and explanation (which often take the form of fields or disciplines in schools) the ontological stack.  At the bottom is the most fundamental layer: physics (all of reality may be explained, in-principle, at this layer).  Next, physics gives rise to chemistry, which simplifies the explanation of many phenomena from their purely physical description.  Further, chemistry can give rise to biology: evolutionary and proximal biology vastly simplify the kind of explanation that would be required for describing, say, an elephant in terms of chemistry.  Biology gives rise to psychology (it is clearly more difficult to explain complex behavior through pure neuro-science), which gives rise to sociology (while the collective action of individual minds is what makes up a society, it can be fruitful to study the society as a whole for those patterns that emerge at this level of analysis).VIII

Each of these layers, from an epistemological standpoint, may be called an abstraction: a lens through which to view the phenomena.IX  Each one explains less of the universe, but what it does explain, it explains more elegantly than the abstractions below would.  It is helpful to view these lenses as being blurrier and blurrier the higher the abstraction: they are designed to filter out information (and therefore the patterns within them), leaving behind only a subset: the subset that is said to emerge at that level.  When we view a squirrel through the abstracted lens of biology, we largely ignore that the squirrel is made of physical particles and instead make recourse to the fact that it is programmed by genes towards macroscopic goal-directed behavior such as seeking out acorns.X

Any pattern one may be able to see at some higher level on the ontological stack must indeed be in-principle present in the higher-resolution pattern provided by viewing the same phenomenon through the lens of a lower-level abstraction, even if it is difficult to discern in practice.  We will probably never find it tractable nor useful to think of a cat as a many-electron-and-quark physics model, but that doesn't mean the cat isn't ultimately just a bunch of electrons and quarks!  Indeed, it is similarly far more useful for our fallible minds to think of the human body in terms of medicine and biology, yet if I were to put your arm under an electron-microscope, you would find that you were made of the same ordinary physical matter (following the same ordinary physical laws) as everything else at the end of the day.  With perfect understanding and ability, one would not only see the emergent patterns in the reduced data, but they would gain insight into why these arose from this underlying sea of “extra” information.  It simply must be that the laws of physics not only allow for, but require the giving rise to chemistry; so to of chemistry to biology, biology to psychology, and to sociology (under the right circumstances, or in the right domain).  In this sense, viewing a phenomenon at a higher level of abstraction may be considered to be a strong approximation of its ultimate physical nature.XI

        The important thing is to understand that when you are at the lowest level, all the patterns are available to you, but many of the emergent patterns will be practically very hard to see among all of the lower information.  At the lowest-level abstraction, one is viewing a full resolution image of the phenomenon.  People do live at an abstraction (though it is not a nice epistemological abstraction where we see the world in terms of physics, chemistry, or even biology, because it was crafted by evolution by natural selection): we live in what evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins calls “middle world”.XII  The “middle world” abstraction, in terms of the ontological stack, is a strange mix of philosophy, biology, psychology, and sociology (with perhaps the major focus on psychology, since that is who we are).  This lens is ultimately the viewing of the world as consisting of human-scale objects (little time is naturally spent worrying about anything smaller than an insect or larger than a land-mass), and it must ultimately have served our ancestors' fitness to understand the world in this way.  Happily, we do see a pretty accurate representation of the world at this level of abstraction: when we walk around, we are correct that there are trees and grass and other animals and people around us!XIII  Yet we still need philosophy of science to generate a proper biological view of such phenomena (or largely, to even think about small particles or large galaxies in the first place).  With a perfect view of the world through the lens of the lowest abstraction, one could imagine getting distracted and disoriented by seeing everything as a bunch of electrons and quarks; without a much more powerful brain, it's difficult to imagine it would be experienced as anything more than tortuous noise (which is ironic because this view actually contains more information—but that's the key here: when one looks at the lowest level of abstraction, it's very difficult for a fallible mind to tease apart the important patterns in the information, hence the need for an epistemology).  When one decides to view a phenomenon from a higher abstraction, what one is doing is removing a lot of the underlying physics and chemistry (for example) so as ultimately look only at the consequences that emerge from those—as a result, one suddenly sees clearly.  It has been fruitful to use partial lenses as well: one may largely view an organism from a biological perspective (ignoring that it is a bunch of chemical processes or particle physics), yet respect some law of physics (say, the conservation of energy), to analyze the biological system from the standpoint of energy (a moving animal, for example, has a kinetic energy associated with its bulk velocity which may be appreciated without making any recourse to the particle physics giving rise to this overall phenomenon).  That is another beauty of the laws of nature as opposed to mere facts: they hold even at higher levels of abstraction (as another example, without thinking in terms of micro-biology, one may make arguments from evolutionary biology that psychological and sociological phenomena ought to be fitness-adaptive as they must have been selected by evolution by natural selection at the genetic level).XIV  Higher-level abstractions may not be able to account for a phenomenon in a deterministic way (instead making appeals to statistics and probabilities), either, because the information which shows the process to be in-principle deterministic may be hidden in the ignored lower layers (but every phenomenon must be a deterministic mechanical philosophy at the level of fundamental physics, and many will nonetheless prove to be even in terms of emergent abstractions).XV  However, keep in mind that ontology itself doesn't “switch lenses” or try to remove some information to make other information easier to see—that's all the result of the epistemology required of fallible minds which are not omniscient gods, but themselves a part of the overall ontology they seek to understand.  After all, as Carl Sagan was fond of saying, “we are a way for The Cosmos to know itself.”XVI


Footnotes:

0. The Philosophy Of Science table of contents can be found, here (footnotephysicist.blogspot.com/2022/04/table-of-contents-philosophy-of-science.html).

I. This is the title to a famous book written by quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger, which stimulated the revolution in biophysics, genetics, and microbiology generally, by emphasizing the question of how life arises from its material makeup, see Scientist: E. O. Wilson: A Life In Nature by Richard Rhodes (Doubleday) (2021) (pp. 63-66, 69-70).

II. Hear “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service (Sub Pop) (2003) (https://open.spotify.com/track/75z2YLg5Lkqf6qL9XOY8tV?si=TN8iR3o3T22K-EuWyLrFGg&utm_source=copy-link), as well as the more relaxed cover, “Such Great Heights” by Iron & Wine (Sub Pop) (2003 / 2006) (https://open.spotify.com/track/6dDxgfvM8pJm7AzmLZB1nN?si=R5GZYLmKSTGOjP5fooywsw&utm_source=copy-link).

III. Examples are generally abundant—in fact, this (mis)use of “emergent” might be more popular than its real use, because thinkers find the mysteriousness of the supernatural version compelling. Though physicist Sean Carroll is quite opinionated about his position on emergence, and often seems to agree with me that it must be reducible, he simultaneously seems to at least come close to committing the fallacy (or suggesting it to his listener) when suggesting that human-level concerns such as emotions are not patterns that would show up in the physics of the system simply because they are emergent rather than fundamental patterns (or, put another way, because they would not be in-practice useful patterns without using the abstraction of human concerns rather than the language of physics), see “Episode 9: Solo -- Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?” uploaded by Sean Carroll (Mindscape) (2018) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLfvvMjuk6U&list=PLrxfgDEc2NxY_fRExpDXr87tzRbPCaA5x&index=236) (24:15 – 29:11). In other situations, he has stated more clearly that he is not a believer in “strong emergence”, as in his April 28th, 2013 tweet: https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll/status/328573819222634496?s=20&t=D8YLWAhHxsHPu98d1gCThQ, in which he further cites “David Chalmers on Emergence” uploaded by YouTube user LennyBound (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN9lT8Vc8kk) (though I have not seen this clip). On another occasion, Carroll appears to praise computer scientist Scott Aaronson for “... slapping down the idea that emergent higher levels have spooky causal powers,” see his June 1st, 2017 tweet to this effect: https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll/status/870398280168906752?s=20&t=D8YLWAhHxsHPu98d1gCThQ, which fruther links out to Aaronson's dissent in “A Theory Of Reality As More Than The Sum Of Its Parts” by Natalie Wolchover (Quanta Magazine) (2017) (https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-theory-of-reality-as-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-20170601/) (though I have not yet read this piece). For more on my position on reducible emergence, see “In Defense Of (Philosophy Of) Science” by Gussman (https://footnotephysicist.blogspot.com/2021/05/in-defense-of-philosophy-of-science.html#FN38A) which further cites To Explain The World by Weinberg (pp. 267). For a courageous defense of reductionism as core to the philosophy of science, see Consilience by E. O. Wilson (pp. 33, 54-56, 58-60, 74, 90-94, 203, 230, 292-293). See also the “In-Principle And In-Practice” chapter.

IV. What I describe as the ontological stack, mathematician Eric Weinstein has independently described as reality's, “layer cake,” though after my due diligence, I cannot find where.

V. See the “Elegance And Complexity” chapter.

VI. Look forward to the "Cosmology" chapter in the "Ontology" volume.

VII. This is also known as supervenience. I have only so-far seen this term used by evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller; I cannot find the tweet I had in mind (which I remember including a diagram), but his February 3rd, 2018 tweet: https://twitter.com/primalpoly/status/959970909690851329?s=20&t=wWN4r1WGKwJTD6YbOatc0w, comes from around the time of my memory. For a formal definition, see the first paragraph in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry, “Supervenience” by Brian McLaughlin and Karen Bennett (Stanford University) (2005 / 2018) (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/) (though I have not read the rest of this entry).

VIII. Notice the step-like shape of the diagram, which signifies that each higher abstraction may be explained in terms of the lower abstractions (but not vice-versa). This diagram is not drawn to scale in the sense that a majority of each abstraction is pure and gives rise to no / cannot be explained in terms of the higher abstraction (meaning the steps should be much deeper).

IX. For a good general definition of abstraction as well as some of its applications to computer programming, see Exploratory Programming For The Arts And Humanities by Nick Montfort (The MIT Press) (2016) (pp. 5, 37, 57-72, 76, 78, 103, 148, 155, 178, 232-233). Theoretical physicist Antony Garrett Lisi uses the term “emergent strata” in place of “abstraction” (though most of his arguments are agreeable, he makes the mistake of contradicting himself by writing “... emergence is not just the converse of reduction,” when it clearly is), see “Emergence” by Antony Garrett Lisi (Edge / Harper Perennial) (2016 / 2018) (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26703) in This Idea Is Brilliant edited by Brockman (pp. 21-23). Computer scientist Ursula Martin looks at the relationship between abstractions and metaphors in “Abstraction” by Ursula Martin (Edge / Harper Perennial) (2017 / 2018) (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27205) from This Idea Is Brilliant edited by John Brockman (pp. 397-398) (ironically, this view is essentially an abstraction of the concept of abstraction that we use here as a “stratum” on the onotological stack).

X. For a similar example, see The Selfish Gene by Dawkins (pp. 60). In terms of the diagram, when we “blur” our vision to view a phenomenon from a higher abstraction, we blur away much of the lower-level details, but doing so practically focuses on what is left, which is what the abstraction is. Do not let this diagram mislead you into thinking it is always best to view a phenomenon from the lowest level of abstractionit is often practically impossible (though it is always a worthy research goal in-principle), see Exploratory Programming For The Arts And Humanities by Montfort (pp. 5, 37) and the “Ariadne's Thread” chapter in Consilience: The Unity Of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson (Vintage Books) (1998 / 1999) (pp. 72-104).

XII. See “Why The Universe Seems So Strange | Richard Dawkins” uploaded to YouTube by the official TED account (TED) (2007) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APOxsp1VFw) (especially 5:04 – 18:56).

XIV. See The Selfish Gene by Dawkins (pp. 60).

XV. I mention again that I believe that quantum physics as it is currently understood must be an abstraction on top of something more fundamental, because in its current form, it is probablistic and outcomes-based rather than deterministic and mechanical, which renders it unfit for the fundamental terminus of the ontological stack.

XVI. See “Carl Sagan - We Are A Way For The Cosmos To Know Itself” uploaded by YouTube user D Peluso (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWnA4XLrMWA) which I believe is from the first episode, “The Shores Of The Cosmic Ocean”, of the phenomenal Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan, Anne Druyan, and Steven Soter (PBS / Cosmos Studios) (1980).

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  1. Change Log:
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    “Abstraction” by Ursula Martin (Edge / Harper Perennial) (2017 / 2018) (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27205) from This Idea Is Brilliant edited by John Brockman (pp. 397-398)
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