Is physical reality more than the sum of its parts?

[Twodogs]

TL;DR

In a recent paper, a 29-year-old theoretical neuroscientist makes an information theoretical argument that this is the case. Does his argument have traction?

There is a paper here: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/19/5/188

And a lengthy article here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-theory-of-reality-as-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-20170601/

The general argument concerns causal emergence and whether all causal agency arises directly from the micro realm or whether it can accurately be treated as a property of macro structures.

The author is quoted: “If you just say something like, ‘Oh, my atoms made me do it’ — well, that might not be true. And it might be provably not true.”

Thanks...

 

[Dale]

Summary:: In a recent paper, a 29-year-old theoretical neuroscientist makes an information theoretical argument that this is the case. Does his argument have traction?

There is a paper here: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/19/5/188

And a lengthy article here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-theory-of-reality-as-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-20170601/

The general argument concerns causal emergence and whether all causal agency arises directly from the micro realm or whether it can accurately be treated as a property of macro structures.

The author is quoted: “If you just say something like, ‘Oh, my atoms made me do it’ — well, that might not be true. And it might be provably not true.”

Thanks...

Well, his argument doesn’t have a lot of traction yet.

A journal like Entropy is primarily a journal for papers that got rejected from more prestigious journals. It has an impact factor of 2.3 and the publisher was briefly on Jeff Beall’s list of predatory publishers. It was removed later after Jeff took a closer look, but the fact that he had to look so closely means that it was fairly similar to a predatory publisher.

It may very well gain traction later, but right now I would say “no”.

The second reference is a pop-sci science news site. It doesn’t seem bad as far as such sites go, but they are not an indication of traction amongst the professional scientific community where traction is measured by the prestige and frequency of the journals discussing a topic.

 

[Twodogs]

Well, his argument doesn’t have a lot of traction yet.

[Moderator fixed mangled quote]

I appreciate your putting in larger context without a complete dismissal.

This is apparently the author's first published paper and I made an effort to check it out and found the following at:
https://mdpi.altmetric.com/details/19598166#score

"This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 122. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 May 2020."It was in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric and I take this to mean there is some interest, though as you suggest, that may be largely on the fringe.

As to substance, the purport of his argument makes sense to me, but I am not sure of his method or even whether you can legitimately address physical theory via information theory.
Thanks.

 

[Dale]

That is a score by the publisher of the article, MDPI, the one I mentioned above that is close to predatory. I am not sure that score is a reliable indicator of anything.

I think that time will tell here. Either the idea will be taken up and refined or it will be examined and discarded.

 

[Twodogs]

Thank you for the perspective.

 

[mfb]

This seems to be more a philosophical argument instead of a scientific one. As an example, a microscopic description of every atom in a gas doesn't have - or need - the concept of a temperature. Is adding that concept "more than the sum of its parts"? I would say no, but as far as I understand this author says yes. You can derive the temperature from the microscopic description. If you couldn't do that then there would be some (revolutionary) new physics, a claim that would need to be backed by experiments, not information theory. If you take a strict microscopic description you can miss useful concepts like the temperature, but you can still predict the time evolution of the system perfectly.

 

[bhobba]

Just a note about acceptable papers on this this forum. They must be peer reviewed, from a respected textbook, a lecture from a respected university such as MIT, and in some cases arxiv. However, and I know this only too well, that does not always guarantee it's not without significant error - experts here have often picked up errors in such papers. I just posted one with an obvious error on another topic - an error so bad I would have rejected the paper if it was referred to me - but it was from a peer reviewed journal so met our standards. It was to make a point that I posted it - but made clear it left out important facts that should have been included.

Thanks
Bill