Almost-anywhere Theories. Reductionism and Universality of Emergence

TL;DR

This paper explores how reductionism and emergence complement each other in understanding natural phenomena, emphasizing the universality of emergent processes through the renormalization group and quantum field theory.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the renormalization group reveals the universal, scale-independent nature of emergent processes across disciplines, bridging physics with biology and cognition.

Findings

Renormalization group highlights the universality of emergent processes.

Emergent phenomena are scale-independent and applicable across disciplines.

Quantum Field Theory provides a trans-disciplinary framework for complexity.

Abstract

We aim here to show that reductionism and emergence play a complementary role in understanding natural processes and in the dynamics of science explanation. In particular, we will show that the renormalization group - one of the most refined tool of theoretical physics - allows understanding the importance of emergent processes' role in Nature identifying them universal organization processes, which is to say they are scale independent. We can use the syntaxes of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking as a trans-disciplinary theoretical scenario for many other forms of complexity, especially the biological and cognitive ones.