Reductionism eliminates emergence. Reductionism is the philosophy that
all relevant properties of something can be explained in terms of the
properties of its components.
A weaker property is supervenience. Something A supervenes on the
physics of its component parts U if two different states of A must
have correspondingly different states of U.
This may seem like the same thing, and many people confuse the two,
however the example of irreversible systems supervening on molecules
with reversible dynamics clearly illustrates the difference.
Incidently, you quote me as saying "reductionism has gone too
far". Whilst this is the sort comment I might make (depending on
context), I don't appear to make it anywhere in my book.
Cheers
On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 02:31:09PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> On 05/05/07, Russell Standish <lists.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> Similarly, chimpanzees are names given to a certain collection of
> > chemicals that happens to behave in a particular way. The rules of
> > chimpanzee behaviour are fully emergent from the rules of chemistry.
> >
>
> In your book you say that "reductionism has gone too far" and then talk
> about weak and strong emergence. Can you explain the relationship between
> reductionism and emergence?
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
> >
--
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A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpcoder.domain.name.hidden
Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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Received on Mon May 07 2007 - 01:16:58 PDT