From Electrons to Elephants and Elections

This highly interdisciplinary book, covering more than six fields, from philosophy and sciences all the way up to the humanities and with contributions from eminent authors, addresses the interplay between content and context, reductionism and holism and their meeting point: the notion of emergence. Much of today's science is reductionist (bottom-up); in other words, behaviour on one level is explained by reducing it to components on a lower level. Chemistry is reduced to atoms, ecosystems are explained in terms of DNA and proteins, etc. This approach fails quickly since we can't cannot extrapolate to the properties of atoms solely from Schrödinger's equation, nor figure out protein folding from an amino acid sequence or obtain the phenotype of an organism from its genotype. An alternative approach to this is holism (top-down). Consider an ecosystem or an organism as a whole: seek patterns on the same scale. Model a galaxy not as 400 billion-point masses (stars) but as an object in its own right with its own properties (spiral, elliptic). Or a hurricane as a structured form of moist air and water vapour. Reductionism is largely about content, whereas holistic models are more attuned to context. Reductionism (content) and holism (context) are not opposing philosophies - in fact, they work best in tandem. Join us on a journey to understand the multifaceted dialectic concerning this duo and how they shape the foundations of sciences and humanities, our thoughts and, the very nature of reality itself.

Auteur

Shyam Wuppuluri is the recipient of the 2020 Albert-Einstein Fellowship at Caputh and is an elected fellow of The Royal Society of Arts. He teaches at Mumbai and has a long standing interest in foundations of sciences and philosophy. As a lead editor, he has published several highly interdisciplinary volumes on various themes including "The Map and the Territory: Exploring the Foundations of Science, Thought and Reality" and "Space, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding". Ian Stewart FRS is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick and author or coauthor of over 200 research papers on pattern formation, chaos, network dynamics, and biomathematics. He has been a Fellow of The Royal Society since 2001, and has served on Council, its governing body. He has five honorary doctorates. He has published more than 120 books including "Singularities and Groups in Bifurcation Theory", "The Symmetry Perspective", popular mathematics books "Why Beauty is Truth", "Calculating the Cosmos", "Significant Figures", "What's the Use?", and the four-volume series "The Science of Discworld" with the late Sir Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen. His awards include the Royal Society's Faraday Medal, the Gold Medal of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications, the Zeeman Medal (IMA and London Mathematical Society), the Lewis Thomas Prize (Rockefeller University), and the Euler Book Prize (Mathematical Association of America).

Contenu

Setting the context.- The Context Principle and its Austro-German Origins ,Guillaume Fréchette (University of Geneva, CH).- Does Linguistics Need Emergence? JTM Miller.- Contextual Meaning and Theory Dependence, Erich Rast, New University of Lisbon.- Epistemological reductionism and pluralism, Mario De Caro (Università Roma Tre & Tufts University).- LEVELLING THE UNIVERSE, John Heil.- Mutualism in the Metaphysics of Nature: The Foundational Insight of Scientific Emergentism, Carl Gillett, Northern Illinois University.- Causation in Buddhist Philosophy,Graham Priest.- Realistic view of causation in the real world, George Ellis.- Where Is the Top and What Might Go Down? Tim Maudlin.- Uncertainty. A Systemic Approach, Ignazio Licata.- Incompleteness, quasi-ness, and multiplicity as peculiar non-reductionist properties of complexity, Gianfranco Minati Italian Systems Society, Milan 20161, Italy.- Micro-latency, Holism and Emergence, CARRUTH, ALEX D..- The Enactive Realism. An Overview,Arturo Carsetti.- Holism and pseudo holism, Sven Ove Hansson.- Supervenience, Emergence and the Primacy of the Micro-Physical,Terry Horgan and Brian McLaughlin.- Mathematics/Theoretical Physics.- The Logic of Contextuality, Dzhafarov, Ehtibar N.- Content, Context, and Naturalism in Mathematics, Otávio Bueno, Department of Philosophy, University of Miami Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA.- Shared mathematical content in the context of physics, ecology and neuroscience, Meyer-Ortmanns, Hildegard.- United but not Uniform: Our Fecund Universe, O'Connor, Timothy William.- Emergence and Typicality in Statistical Mechanics, Sergio Chibbaro, Lamberto Rondoni and Angelo Vulpiani.- The metal: a model for modern physics, Tom Lancaster.- The Reduction and Emergence of Spacetime: Blurring Content and Context? Karen Crowther.- The electron and the cosmos: from the universe of fragmented objects to the particle-world, L. Chiatti.- "A novel feature of atomicity in the laws of nature": Quantum theory against reductionism, Arkady Plotnitsky.- Geometric and exotic contextuality in quantum reality, Michel Planat, Besan con, France.- (Non)Emergence of (un)reality, Kaszlikowski Dagomir, NUS Singapore.- Identity, content, and context: from logic to quantum and classical physics,Jose Acacio de Barros, Decio Krause, Federico Holik.- How substance and structure emerge in chemistry, Robin Findlay Hendry, Department of Philosophy, Durham University.- Contextual Probability in Quantum Physics, Cognition, Psychology, and Social Science,Andrei Khrennikov, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden.- Computer Science/Cognitive Science.- Partiality, paradox and computation,Samson Abramsky.- Constituents, Context and Meaning, Robert Bishop.- CONCEPTS, EXPERTS, AND DEEP LEARNING (abstract)Ilkka Niiniluoto (University of Helsinki).- Context and Content in Neural Networks, Thomas Filk, Institute of Physics, Albrecht-Ludwigs University Freiburg, 79104 Freiburg, Parmenides Foundation for the Study of Thinking, Munich.- Presence Based Neutral Monism and the World of ExperienceWilliam Seager, Philosophy Department, University of Toronto Scarborough.- Little-e elminativism in molecular and cellular cognition ... and beyondJohn Bickle, Mississippi Sate University and the University of Mississippi Medical Center.- From Electrons to Elephants: Context and ConsciousnessMichael Tye, ABSTRACT: N/A.- Can agency be reduced to molecules?Raymond Noble, Sir Denis Noble.- BiologyThe interlinking between epigenetics, environment and gene expression: a key for understanding the morphogenesis and individuation of living beings.Luciano Boi.- The Epistemology of Life Bertolaso Marta.- Reductionism and Holism and in the disease/illness debateMarco Buzzoni and Luigi Tesio.- Context, fiction, and schizophrenia Manuel Rebuschi.- Humanities/Social SciencesOn the Explanation of Social Facts Friedel Weinert.- The secret of matter, life and human cultureDiederik Aerts, Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies and Department of Mathematics, Brussels Free University, Brussels, Belgium Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies, Brussels Free University, Brussels, Belgium Laboratorio di Autoricerca di Base, 6917 Barbengo, Switzerland.- Architecture and Big Data: From Scale to Capacity Nana Last.- Being and Tea? - Building the Bridge between East and West Annika Doring and José Ordóñez García.- Art is Critical John D Barrow.