Classical and Quantum Physics

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 4 focus on examples from physics because it is often thought of as the home of reductionism and as the reductionistic model for the rest of the sciences. What follows is a series of case studies, some in more detail, some in less, illustrating the pattern of contextual emergence across subdisciplines in physics. The chapter dives into the cases, some of which have been taken to be workhorse examples of successful ontological reductions, such as temperature and chemical potential (Section 4.3), the macroscopic world’s relationship to the microscopic (Section 4.5), and molecular structure (Section 4.6), while others illustrate particular aspects of contextual emergence nicely, such as white dwarf stars (Section 4.4), quantum entanglement (Section 4.7), and renormalization group explanations (Section 4.8). The chapter is rounded out with some briefer miscellaneous examples of contextual emergence.