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Emergence in Solid State Physics and Biology

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Abstract

There has been much controversy over weak and strong emergence in physics and biology. As pointed out by Phil Anderson in many papers, the existence of broken symmetries is the key to emergence of properties in much of solid state physics. By carefully distinguishing between different types of symmetry breaking and tracing the relation between broken symmetries at micro and macro scales, I demonstrate that the emergence of the properties of semiconductors is a case of strong emergence. This is due to the existence of quasiparticles such as phonons. Furthermore time dependent potentials enable downward causation as in the case of digital computers. Additionally I show that the processes of evolutionary emergence of living systems is also a case of strong emergence, as is the emergence of properties of life out of the underlying physics. A useful result emerges: standard physics theories and the emergent theories arising out of them are all effective theories that are equally valid.

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Notes

  1. Basically the same is true in quantum chemistry, see [61].

  2. Reminder: I am using David Chalmer’s definitions, see Sect. 1.1.

  3. Called a “Foundational Determinative Relation” (FDR) by Carl Gillett, see [47].

  4. This is made explicit by [67] in their equations (1) and (2); they say “Eqs. (1) and (2) are, for all practical purposes, the Theory of Everything for our everyday world.”

  5. Complexities can arise regarding the commutation here because of the “\(\ne\)” relation. The implication “\(\Rightarrow\)” here and in (5) should be read “can imply” rather than “implies”. This complication does not apply to (6) because that implication does not use commutation of an inequality.

  6. I am excluding discussion of the context of the very early universe where cosmic inflation took place. In that case, SSB(m) had a major effect at macro scales.

  7. See the Blundell quote in Sect. 3.4.

  8. Note that the laws of physics are not algorithms—it’s Newton’s Laws of Motion, not Newton’s algorithm—and they do not compute, see [15].

  9. They are effective theories in the sense of [28].

  10. “The broken symmetry state is not an eigenstate of the system Hamiltonian H (it breaks one of the symmetries of H) and so it is not a stationary state.” [20].

  11. This is in parallel to the biological case, see Sect. 5.4 and Eq. (21) below.

  12. However note that the issue of randomness is complex and subtle; see for example [96].

  13. A simple analogous model of how this effect works is a pendulum with time dependent length, see the Appendix of [39].

  14. See Climate change and farming: ’Unpredictability is here to stay’.

  15. I thank Martin Rees for that comment.

  16. Private communication.

  17. Note that ‘bottom-up’ and ’top-down’ are used exactly in the opposite way in discussions about EFTs and emergence. The top-down construction of an EFT means that we are constructing the EFT by deriving it from a more fundamental high energy theory. I will use the emergence appellation.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Barbara Drossel, Andrew Briggs, Martin Rees, and Carlo Rovelli for helpful comments. I thank Carole Bloch and Rob Adam for extremely helpful proposals regarding the scope of this paper. I thank two anonymous referees for comments that have greatly strengthened the paper.

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    George F. R. Ellis

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Ellis, G.F.R. Emergence in Solid State Physics and Biology. Found Phys 50, 1098–1139 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-020-00367-z

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