United but not Uniform: Our Fecund Universe

Abstract

An austerely monistic, reductionist vision of the universe is a perennial temptation for systematic thinkers, and it leads some to see evidence that isn’t there. The successes of the mature physical and biological sciences have made plain that everything we can observe arose through elementary physical processes and is composed of those very same elements. But it does not follow, nor should we suppose, that the activity of every composed thing is merely a coarse-grained pattern wholly determined by the underlying portion of those elementary processes. On the best interpretation of the full range of our evidence, the elements of our universe bear the seeds of genuinely new processes and powers that arise when appropriate configurations are achieved. Precisely how it does so is still not known. Such knowledge will come by exploring the formation of certain stable boundary conditions and the nature of the effects such boundary conditions impose or foster. We should avoid the common assumption that there is a single generic form common to all varieties of ostensibly emergent phenomena. There may well be ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ varieties that need to be understood on a case-by-case basis.