More clarity on the limits of reductionism

 

I've been really enjoying Erik Hoel's book "The world behind the world". (https://www.simonandschuster.com/.../Erik-Hoel/9781982159382)

 

Spending so many years on particle accelerators and synchrotron light sources, I started to think about the x-ray experiments that are done at these facilities. They are an important part of looking at and understanding the world at an atomic scale. For example, a large percentage of protein structures have been determined by x-ray diffraction experiments at synchrotron light sources.

One of the primary tools of science is reductionism, which seeks to look at smaller and smaller scales in order to explain: understanding by breaking something down to smaller parts. While it's certainly extremely valuable, it also has its limits, and feeds into what John Vervaeke calls "The meaning crisis", one manifestation of which is the idea that we "are nothing but a collection of atoms", or perhaps nothing but molecules, or perhaps nothing but quarks, electrons and photon excitations within the standard model in a quantum field theory framework. In high school, I remember reading Dawkins' "Selfish Gene" and getting quite depressed about this view of ourselves as only truly real, or interesting on the level of DNA/RNA.

 

I've long been interested in arguments showing the limits of this kind of thinking. Hoel's work is really helpful in this respect. I have more to learn, but one very concrete result is in terms of "causal emergence" (see https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.01854 )

(I'm also motivated to get back to the writings of the philosopher Nancy Cartwright, who talks about the limits of the language of physics in her books such as "The Dappled World" and "How the Laws of Physics Lie")

 

Hoel shows that under a wide range of concepts of causality, that one actually gains causal power when one goes up to larger scales. This relates to multiple realizability (e.g. how our bodies are replaced by new matter, but our identity remains, or the Ship of Theseus which is slowly replaced part by part). As biological systems evolve, there is a pressure to create large scale causal systems that are robust to changing randomness and complexity at the micro-scale. (It's nice to see Judea Pearl's work on causation referenced as well. I really loved "The Book of Why", which Josip recommended.)

 

I also learned a lot from this talk by Vervaeke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vazO36OnGKI) in which he gives arguments towards a Neo-platonist ontology. He mentions Hoel's work here. This moves us beyond a purely materialist way of thinking, and makes room for transcendence and spirituality.

Further, the arguments in Hoel's work, show why "The selfish gene" picture is limited: there are causal structures at many different scales. And most of the human world that we care about exists at a larger scale than our genes. Our friendships and commitments, our intellectual pursuits and our everyday existence in our bodies is not on the level of DNA and does indeed have causal efficacy.

 

Anyway, this is another one of my directions that I'm really appreciating having more free time to explore!