Making Sense of Emergence

Abstract

This chapter discusses the reductionist hypothesis, which remains a topic of controversy among philosophers, but which, the other hand, the great majority of scientists accept without question. The hypothesis posits that all animate or inanimate matter of which people have detailed knowledge are controlled by a set of fundamental laws of which people also have detailed knowledge. Many find it acceptable, at first, to assume that if everything obeys the same fundamental laws, then studying those laws is fundamental, and the only scientists who are studying anything fundamental are those who are working on those laws. This is the basic and obvious consequence of reductionism. The main fallacy in this kind of thinking is that it does not, by any means, imply a “constructionist” hypothesis. In fact, the more elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevant they become to the real problems of society.

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