On the other hand, she strongly suggested that a "may not" is the same as a "will not", which is obviously wrong (and presumably why she only suggested it).
The page Physics of the "COSMOS" has given the following writing the thumbs up on it's page. Excellent. WHY TIME DILATION ALSO PROVES THAT ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY: Energy has/involves GRAVITY, AND ENERGY has/involves inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE. "Mass"/ENERGY involves BALANCED inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE consistent WITH/AS what is BALANCED ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL FORCE/ENERGY, AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. E=mc2 is DIRECTLY AND FUNDAMENTALLY DERIVED FROM F=ma. F=ma AND E=mc2 PROVE that ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. So, time dilation ALSO proves that GRAVITY IS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY; as gravity and ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY are linked AND BALANCED IN AND OUT of SPACE AND TIME; AS ALL of SPACE is NECESSARILY ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL (IN BALANCE); AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. ACCORDINGLY, gravity/acceleration involves BALANCED inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE; AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. MOREOVER, GRAVITATIONAL force/ENERGY IS proportional to (or BALANCED with/as) inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE; AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. This ALSO explains the cosmological redshift AND the "black hole(s)". "Mass"/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. This explains time dilation, as ALL of SPACE is NECESSARILY ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL (IN BALANCE); AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. By Frank DiMeglio
@@frankdimeglio8216 So, in order to "understand" physics, she has to acknowledge that gravity is not real and merely a product of electromagnetic interactions? That is the most absurd statement I've ever heard. How about you share ONE scholarly article that tackles this concept?
Now I tackle the very subject of this video. Reductionism is a philosophical doctrine. There are others, and none of them enter in conflict with science. We can't know for certain whether reductionism is "successful", we have to compare it with something else that could be more successful. It is only a work hypothesis, that could be repelled in the future. In any case, telling that the final explanation of a living cell is necessarily reductionist is just a wild theory: we don't know, and there is no way to know. That's just the reason why reductionism is philosophy. I have seen in others video that Sabine rejects some ideas on the only ground that they are incompatible with reductionism, that is plain circular reasoning. The truth is that reductionism fails in many branches of science, starting from biology. Auguste Comte who is a true philosopher in addition to being a sociologist knew that a long time ago, and proposed the positivism doctrine which is different from reductionism, although it is still more successful, in particular in quantum mechanics. Actually, and it is my second conclusion, reductionism is metaphysical, it postulates things that can't be observed, viz. the ultimate components of "Nature" and elementary relations among them.
Yes. Good post. Reductionism is a useful tool in some cases. However, it is wrong to conclude that all secrets yield to its power--that isn't science, it's scientism.
@@neptasur In the case of quantum mechanics, reductionism doesn't work. There is no way to explain the measurements by simpler processes. The wavefunction is but a mathematical fiction, and anyway its collapse is not simpler. The entanglement is the explicit impossibility to separate the components of the system. That's why the Solvay congress opted for the positivism.
@@clmasse Science itself is a mathematical abstraction of reality. But there is no shortage of people who presume that science give us access to reality directly. What is science doing by positing idealized conditions that don't really exist if not attempting to find the nature of things that mathematical explaintions don't themselves provide? The problem with reductionism as an ultimate explaination can easily be seen by appeal to laws of nature: If particle A explains particle B; and particle B explains particle C; and particle C is explained by "laws of nature", why not just start the whole thing by saying particle A is explained by magic? It's just as good in terms of an attempt at an explaination of everything.
I'm not an academic philosopher but I feel confident in asserting that virtually all academic philosophers would disagree that reductionism is not philosophical. And not because they are stupid but because they have arguments which you probably have not yet considered. Maybe even perspectives which you have not seen so far. Something can seem absolutely clear but that does not prevent it from being philosophical too. Philosophy isn't primarily about making scientific predictions and evaluating if they hold up (especially the first part is science's job), but about challenging our perspectives, and such things (though I guess there are also philosophers who would disagree with that description)
I don't understand why she thinks that calling reductionism an hypothesis makes it necessarily non-philosophical as if the two were mutually exclusive.
UncleZhou49 It seems to me that most often this kind of ignorance comes from a lack of exposure to philosophy and unwillingness to consider perspectives outside of science / empiricism. To be fair, it can seem very unattractive to engage with philosophy if you don't come across arguments which challenge your valued perspectives specifically, AND in a way which you can understand despite not knowing the jargon and holding a "this is so dumb"-bias. But even if people are a product of their environment in that way, I still absolutely hate this because it goes directly against any notion of intellectual humility and awareness of the extent of your unawareness. And we're gonna have an increasingly bad time on this planet if people (and especially those revered in science) remain unaware to such an extent and won't check their assumptions at least some of the times before jumping to conclusions.
@@UncleZhou49 A lot, and I do mean a lot of scientists, especially physicist journalists (they write pop books) are totally ignorant about philosophy. The late Stephen Hawking said in his book THE GRAND DESIGN that philosophy was dead, never realizing he had just made a self stultifying philosophical statement. Larry Krause dismisses and despises philosophy all the while using rules of science determined by philosophy. Most scientists would do well to take a Philosophy 101, the art of critical thinking class.
Sabine, I don’t know quite how to say it without sounding trite, or silly, but holy crap! Thanks for being so awesome, I love your work here! Please keep it up! You are wonderful!
"A lot of people seem to think that reductionism is a philosophy, but it most definitely is not" How does someone so educated make that type of claim? Reductionism is absolutely a mode of philosophy. At least engage with someone like Dennett, who aims to push a materialist conception of reality. Just read Nagle's bat essay to get some sort of idea as to why reductionism just terminates at a certain point.
0:54 The constituents, and also how they are put together. There is an old engineering adage that, in any system, complexity derives not so much from the number of components, as in how they interact with one another. So when designing a system, the “KISS Principle” is more about keeping those interactions under strict control, than simply minimizing the number of components.
I don't know enough to say whether your conclusion is correct, or not, but I appreciate that you brought this subject up. It is a very fascinating topic, simply because it has been so important to scientific advancement for a long time, and reducing it to its constituents is helpful in understanding it better.
The fact that complications exist when scaling up is why we have different domains of science, rather than everything simply being very difficult quantum mechanics. We approximate the results from quantum mechanics when we propose 'laws' of chemistry, biology, etc.
That was some top tier determinism she threw in saying that the calculations would take too long to predict the outcome of an election with particle theory. Particles don't make decisions.
Yes, Sabine, your commentary is approximately good. No matter how you call it, either "methodological reductionism" or "Theoretical reductionism", etc, all of it and all of them, are part of the human logic. When one talks about human logic, no matter how one does it, shouldn't lose the sight of the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of it : the LOGICAL CHAIN that SHOULDN'T be broken no matter what ! NEVER EVER ! When the logical chain is broken, like the one aplied in the human science ( so-called "science", because from a point in the human history is more like a religion ! ) after the briliant mind of Galileo Galilei, all hell of compounded and accumulated errors breaks loose and the more you go deeper and deeper with the reductionism in any form, the more you depart from the real manifestation of the universal phenomena of the Universe, at any scale ( micro and macro ). The right approach would be to stop saying that a "scientific" theory is a good one the moment the real logical chain of cause and effect is broken. For example, the chain of cause and effect is broken when the current relativity theory predict an "infinitesimal energy point" of the begining of the so-called Universe, or for the model of a "Black Hole" where the Einstein theory predict a point of gravitational singularity where the curvature of "space-time" is INFINITE ( ?!?! ) or for the dilation of the inexistent "time". Wouldn't be better to say that a specific theory is just a human logical approximation of a poor understood real phenomenon ? What if at the center of the Galaxies there's nothing ( I mean "almost nothing" or a very high and local entropic state ) and the disintegration of matter there is just a normal dynamical phenomena of a lack of very strong directional entropy resulted from the normal dynamic of the natural creation and evolution of an absolutely free material aggregation in the universal "space" ? Or for the existence of the non-existence real "time ? What if we say that "time" doesn't exist in reality and build an explanation of real phenomena based on this reality that doesn't break the real logical chain ? What if in the case of the inexistent "Bing Bang", a theory of "deep and almost infinite-energy" that has a normal never-ending real cause and effect is employed ? Because, in the end, can anything stop the universal chain of "cause and effect" ? Can anybody believe the humongous stupidity that "something" can come from "nothing" ? Can anybody or anything use the logical chain of any kind of "logical reductionism" to sustain such a huge stupidity ? From what I see in the last approximately 5 centuries yes, it can !
You said quite a lot in such a brief amount of time … I will definitely be viewing this again (and again) to gain a better understanding of what you mean … Thanks for making me think. 😎👍🏽
I am amazed how the elements were ever isolated, because when you get a load of something from the ground it may be a lot of things mixed up. But it is essential to identify the pure elements to use them and study their properties and develop atomic theory.
The concept of multiple discovery or multiple invention, is one I wish Sabine would do a video on someday. I believe it has much to offer to the idea of Determinism.
I can think of at least one field where reductionism has been counterproductive. That is health care. Doctors no longer treat a sick patient. They treat organs. All the diagnostics, tests, medicines and specialisations are narrowly focused on one organ, sometimes, one of its functions. This kind of reductionist approach has made health care prohibitively expensive.
As an electronics technician I've had to employ both types of reductionism simultaneously to arrive at an accurate diagnosis of the cause of problems within a system, and craft an adequate workaround. This is something that electronics technician are quite adept at doing (the good techs at least). Believe it or not but intuition actually factors into this as well. Many theories are derived first from intuition then proven through reductionism. Perhaps your next video will address intuition?
Combustion moves in all areas, wheels and gears makes combustion a tameable energy. Without the right combination of parts the explosions (engine combustion) won't move forward. Emergence is the process where all parts come together to have the car-effect to manifest, mainly because of its favourable outcome. The parts are less likely to become a more repeatedly emergent part in the environment (earth surface) if it were not because it helps a more powerful whole to emerge a car. We can also have a sail on a bathtub as a boat but the odds aren't so favourable thus occurring less. In classical physics, flow requires substance, substance can have patterns and patterns can be cyclical thus more permanent, the patterns are the emergent qualities. A chair is not a hole in the ground, it's a platform elevated with legs to rest on top of, only because our legs allow us to sit. Emergence is a pattern of cause and effect that guarantees favorable outcome mainly a system that self affects more than it interacts with simpler les potent flows from the environment (thinking of point where energy becomes mass) Emergence Is a beautiful symphony, and reductionism is becoming aware of the parts that come together favorably and thus more common to repeat since it's a incremental step from chaos to order. It's in 'favorable odds' that emergence gets its substance.
The irony is that reductionism has its roots in aesthetics. We have a bias toward tidiness and simplicity that has nothing really to do with rigor. We just prefer parsimony.
Really? 1. Perhaps the most simple answer to all questions is "Allah did it". And some consider it the most aesthetic one. 2. Simplicity guides us to physics only under a set of much narrower constraints, like the theory should be quantitative... 3. Ornaments (in science) usually means someone is cheating. 4. It works.
@@meahoola Note the qualifier, 'irony.' Our expectation if we didn't have the bias that parsimony is beautiful would be that a particle 'zoo' need not have some tidier underlying mechanism. Simplicity does work... except when it doesn't.
@@meahoola I don't think most people think that the fundamental equations of physics are simple. Probably they don't even think they are aesthetic. It takes a mind mathematically schooled for years into sophisticated intuitions to see the simplicity, that a single insight can tie so much together.
@@ablebaker8664 OTOH; its entirely possible that the subatomic basis of matter/energy is cleverly simplist.... parsimonious, and our convoluted zoo of particles is an artifact of that our math and basic assumptions are wrong. Above that, our perception of reality is that objects and systems are discrete and atomic so reductionism is a useful tool of deduction and logic.
Reductionism is a worldview which has been barreling through human interest of seeking the ultimate arche. There's nothing new. Of course it's a philosophy though materialist scientists are quite alien to the notion... probably they have never heard of Heraclitus Parmenides Democretus Zeno. They maintained the same belief
1:29 And then you have levels above that of individual organisms: “ecology’, how organisms interact with each other; “biophysics”, about how they operate and interrelate to their environment as part of a physical system, subject to the usual physical laws.
There's a very important point to note here: while of course Reductionism can even be a scientific approach, normally, when someone discusses "reductionism" in a conversation, they are talking about assuming that a problem can be solved only using a part of the involved elements or assuming the elements they know or prefer are the only ones involved in the issue.
Could you produce an essay/video on de Broglie Pilot Wave Theory/Bohmian Mechanics? Are there some modern physicists that look at the deterministic approach to calculate wave functions and guide functions and apply that in their development of theory?
There are also two types of "methodological" reductionism: "descriptive" reductionism: describing the apparent properties of a macroscopic object in terms of the apparent properties of its constituent parts, which (almost) always fails; and "functional/causal reductionism": describing the dynamics/behaviour of a macroscopic object in terms of the interactions between its constituent parts, which (at least in principle) always works.
Thanks for this info. Perhaps you, or anybody, could suggest some authors or references on the two types of methodological reductionism, especially something relevant to the measurement problem, physics more broadly, or cognitive science. I do read stuff like this, in trying to decide if linguistic semantics reduces to something non-linguistic.
@@fbkintanar I don't have any references for this, sorry - I came up with this distinction all by myself! [It may not be a new idea (others may have thought of it), but I don't know who they are.] That said, on a sufficiently nuanced definition of "reduction" (e.g., Sabine's) and of just what kinds of things can be "reduced", I think the distinction is a natural one.
Would you consider the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection as an example of Theory Reductionism? I tend to think that Evolution is not related to Methodological Reductionism, since it is not necessarily related to any process of dismantling things apart.
I'm still not clear on the definition of theory reductionism. You said (3:14) "methodological reductionism is about the properties of the real world," so did you mean to imply that theory reductionism is not about the real world, i.e. it is only about mathematical theories? I thought science was all about methodological reductionism -- trying to explain a gestalt phenomenon by trying to model it's constituent parts. Would Einstein's theory of general relativity be a methodological reduction of classical mechanics? Can you provide examples of theory reductionism in science or in mathematics? Would David Hilbert's program to resolve certain logical paradoxes using Zermelo-Frankel Set Theory be an example of theory reductionism? How about in theoretical physics?
The idea is rooted in philosophy which is the transition from mythos to logos, to explain x in terms of y: "The term ‘reduction’ as used in philosophy expresses the idea that if an entity x reduces to an entity y then y is in a sense prior to x, is more basic than x, is such that x fully depends upon it or is constituted by it. Saying that x reduces to y typically implies that x is nothing more than y or nothing over and above y." And y can of course be a set of further intertwined things. When applied to consciousness this method creates all sorts of problems for the scientific method by "explaining" things by referring to other simpler things (transitivity), without loosing something during this process. More on this: plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/
Great follow up to your previous video on emergence. Is there a place where I can read up on this distinction between methodological and theory reductionism? And what is a methodological reduction (e.g. of Darwinian natural selection to biochemistry and homeostasis; or the emergence of life) when there may not be, for the foreseeable future, any practical mathematically-precise theories for the reducer and the reducee? Perhaps (a large part of) science works at the level of conceptual reductions that are not always equivalent to (mathematical) theory reductions. I do think these distinctions helps us make progress on phenomenology (in the physicists' sense) of theoretical claims about open problems in science, not just physics but beyond (e.g. earth science on a Gaia-hypothesis planet, biology, and cognitive science, which are domains where the notion of emergence is kicked about a lot recently). So kudos on the work you are doing. But I worry that other sciences may be distracted by "physics-envy"; there is not enough reason to expect that all realms of investigation are amenable to physics-like mathematical characterizations. In particular, unlike physics and chemistry, many other sciences seem to have an intrinsic reliance on historical-local modes of scientific explanation, where the physics-model of science is precisely the search for repeatable-experiment-based universal explanations. For example, Darwinian insights about patterns in biology are explanatory because they relate to *this* phylogenetic tree on *this* watery planet with its oxygen rich atmosphere. This guides our choice of what scientific, technological and daily-life problems are worth our attention and efforts, even if they "supervene upon" or emerge from biochemistry and homeostasis. Reducing part of the biological pattern to nonhistorical-universal biochemistry does not remove or dissolve the power of historical explanations, relative to this tree of life on this planetary biosphere. If we detect a phylogeny on some distant exoplanet, *that* tree doesn't really explain (historical, important aspects) of patterns of life on this planet. We still need to explain relative to *this* phylogenetic tree on *this* planet if we are to act on a time-scale of human history. We can't wait for light-centuries to get our answers from facts on distant exoplanets. It's like sunsets and celestial mechanics, time-zones and relativistic notions of time. Just because we have physical reductions of measurable phenomena doesn't dissolve the power of conceptual explanations. Ultimately, the formal-mathematical level of physical theories needs to be translated in to a expository-conceptual level, and be made comprehesible to cognitive agents; so physics itself can benefit from paying attention to levels beyond mathematical formalisms. Certainly the measurement problem seems to require some attention to cognition. Personally, I don't think conscious observers have any causal role in making observed states "real", that can be explained by the macro-scale measurement devices used in quantum experiments (and maybe someday quantum computations). But the devices are artifacts designed and calibrated to specific measurable attributes to the exclusion of all others, and they are designed and built by cognizing researchers guided by conceptual explanations for what the flashes and squiggles on the device display mean. The practices of laboratories and the artifacts of instrumentation provide an inescapable context for physics as an explanatory science, performed by human actors. Contextuality, both conceptual and maybe mathematically modeled, may play an important role in explaining nonlocal quantum states (e.g. Samson Abramsky and Bob Coecke on categorical quantum mechanics, or Robert Spekkens and the psi-epistemic approach you mention in one [which?] of your videos).
I tend to think that the role of (or direction of causal reasoning in) the kind of theory reductionism that doesn't go hand in hand with methodological reduction might be the following: The analog of the "smaller" component is a relatively simple system (call it A). Now we wish to see if we can explain a more complex system B which 1) has some emergent simplicities/regularities (so is interestingly non-random), and for which 2) the emergent simplicities of the complex system B are in some way causally dependent on some of the properties/behaviours of our originally characterized relatively simple system A. We normally think of the system B, which is more complex than A, as being analogous to the "whole" in part-whole methodological reductionism but it is only an analogy, since the simpler system A need not be a physical part of B and simple system A need not be smaller than B but could rather be surrounding it or inter-mixed with it or what have you. The (theory) reductionist claim is that we think of (some) crucial properties of system A as being causal of the constraints/simplicities of B. And yet there is the question of whether the causality also may go "downward" from more complex (and dependent) system B to system A in some sense. There may be cases where simple system A is present in the environment with more probability, and is constrained in its form/behaviour, partly by reason of it helping cause a particular type of complex system B "around" it or weakly interacting with it. In the time evolution of interdependent systems A and B, both may cause each other (at least somewhat e.g. cause each others' stability) in a virtuous "symbiotic-by-analogy" circle. Although the causality may very well be circular (that seems like the most likely case for often-seen, stable system pairs) we can think of it somewhat as reductionism because we admitted that compared to A, B has complexity not related to A, as well as a partial dependence on A. So B has the same partial causal dependence relationship to A as a whole has to a part. As an aside, before doing this kind of reasoning, one has to have good principles as to where one draws the boundaries of system A and system B. Why are they not just collectively system C? For this "system individuation/delineation/scoping" question we need ideas like the boundary (physical or property-definitional) at which each system is at least semi-autonomous (in self-causing its stability as the type of system); the boundary at which the system is only loosely causally coupled to other systems. So while there may be causal dependency between A and B, it may be for example only based on a small subset of the whole essential set of autopoietic (self-causal) properties of A and related to only a small subset of the essential properties of system B. And vice versa. Or the causality may have a lot of substitutability or be only stochastic, or weak in some other sense, relative to the strong inter-causality within each system type A and B.
Herbert Simon's "The Sciences of the Artificial" is a help in understanding the relationship between various levels of a system, and how complex behaviour can evolve from simplicity.
This is one of the very few videos by Sabine where, imho, her (small) intellectual bias shows. She obviously (and with very good reasons) prefers research in cosmology to research in particle physics, and her separating methodological reductionism (which looks at smaller elements) from theoretical reductionism (which can work with large scale phenomena) reflects her preference. However, I think this is just a philosophical opinion, not a fact about scientific success. She wants to consider both as equally scientific forms of reduction, but she uses a weak philosophical argument to express their difference and her preference. The fact is, she defends reductionism because it has always worked extremely well. But then she says that larger scale phenomena are not always reduced to their components, out of convenience. Well, if the criterion is what works, what is convenient, both reductionism and non-reductionism work and thus they are both acceptable. They simply fail to work where they cannot be applied. One does not explain traffic, sociological change, political decision making with particle physics, just as one does not explain relativity with quantum mechanics. It's really not about choosing between two forms of reductionism - it's about choosing between several different models of reality that are not easily placed in a top-bottom hierarchical scheme (large objects top - quanta bottom; or: social behaviour top - laws of physics bottom). I think the complexity of different forms of human knowledge speaks strongly against all reductionism, not just against sticking to /one/ reductionism.
Your criticism of Reductionism is perfectly suited to denounce the criticisms some people have on the claims that consciousness is an emergent property that cannot be applied to the individual components of the functioning brain from which consciousness emerges. BTW.......you make that dress look fantabulous!
@@TheodorReik I don't see how it's possible unless one could prove that the individual physical elements and forms of energy (such as "bioelectrical signals") which work together to produce the emergent phenomenon we label "consciousness" must necessarily also be an emergent phenomenon identical to what we already label "consciousness". Until then, I see no good reason to accept panpsychism as probable or even possible. Possibility, just as impossibility, need to be demonstrated......not assumed to exist just because we can think a condition up in our mind.
@@SabineHossenfelder Sabine I hope you don't think I'm a troll. But your single word answer is fundamentally wrong. What we perceive as complex emergence is simple emergence disguised within a complex system. It's smoking mirrors. Modern physics has become obsessed with reductionism before it it has done its due diligence in larger macroscopic systems. Condensed matter chemistry/physics being a beacon of hope. The barriers we see in 'complex emergence' is because we are 'normal' scientists blinded by a flawed paradigm. It's easier to ask the correct questions, find new answers and complete theories through emergence before we embark on proof through reductionism. Our current reductionist understanding does not tie with reality and never will. It's fundamentally flawed.
What you appear to be saying for theory reductionism is that theories in physics tend to have a reduction in complexity over time as they become better explained with simpler, more reaching concepts. And then there is the observation that there can be no basis for an assumption that theories will necessarily maintain that kind of reductionism or lower complexity because physical observation is necessarily independent from theory.
The are different perspectives, "top down" vs. "bottom up", or "I have a thing that does this because its made of that." vs. "There are these things that add up to that." Like any other tool or model, they have different uses depending on what you are trying to describe. The nature of the whole or the constituents.
@@obsidianjane2267 Thanks, Obsidian. To me it's like saying, 70% or 1.0 - 0.3. They're two different ways of saying the same thing. It seems in each case you posit and test the principle that the larger is determined by its smaller constituents.
@@austin3789 Yes, the two are not adversarial concepts. Which is used depends on what your subject or thesis is. The entire system or the constituents.
What's the proper termananaligy when comparing like systems? Brains are comparable to fungi in its neuronal struters use of serotonin like transmitters as well as oxygen consumption so regardless of the valitaty of that observation is there a word for that system comparision?
"Biology can be reduced to Chemistry. Chemistry can be reduced to Physics." No, that's wrong. Here's why: I will post the same comment I made on Sabine's videos about "emergence" and "free will". In this video, Sabrine shows a graphic of reductionist causality from fundamental (atomic) particle -> molecule -> life organism. But it is a classical problem that *nobody* knows how self-organizing life "emerged" from causal interactions at the fundamental particle and molecular scales: I really like Sabine and the online persona she has created. But she has a very serious problem: She is trying seriously to (re)create, single-handedly, the field of "Philosophy of Science" from her own experience of science practice. Greater minds than hers has similarly stumbled, just to mention Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Pascual Jordan who tried to spin philosophy out of their scientific experience, but with no more than a gymnasia exposure in philosophy up to Kant and no further. For example, there is an entire serious scientific-philosophical literature on "emergentism" going back to Samuel Alexander in the 1920s and continuing forward to the work of Max Delbrück at Cal Tech in the 1970s. She waves this away with a single gesture, and states that there is no single example of strong emergence that is known to science. But of course, the emergence of life from the foundations of chemistry and physics is the classical example of emergentism. There is not yet any causal explanation of how self-organizing life emerged from causal interactions of fundamental particles and molecules. That is how emergentism was proposed in the first place, as at least a placeholder to name the problematic. If Sabine has solved the problem of the emergence of life, I hope she will quickly put up a video outlining her discovery!
Compounded in the big error is a confusion between reductionism and atomism. Atomism has been successful, in several stages, in physics up to the quarks, but it doesn't work any longer. Remember we still have no explanation of confinement (of quarks that is…), and this is because atomism fails at this scale. There have been the bootstrap theory where every particles is made of other particles, which in turn are made of other particules including the one it stated with.
@@bahadrartay4666 Reductionism is not a scientific method, it is metaphysics, an _a priori_ statement about reality, and reality itself is a philosophical concept. Science is about observations and how to manage them in the most economic way, it is certainly not a truth or something of the like. Atomism is an efficient way to manage observations, but it is no more than a method. It is a pity than people with shallow mind but with thick arrogance have fudged the two very different ideas, showing that they have understood none of them.
Hello, Thank you for the explanation of reductionism. Could you give an example of a theory that is emerging from another fundamental theory, yet the emerging theory is explaining behavior at smaller scales? I am trying to understand the point you make at time 3:40 in the video.
like wise i wonder why prof. Reiss would use cepheid stars in the large magellanic cloud to measure expansion of the universe ... isn't lmc gravitationally bound to the milkyway galaxy ? or gravitationally slung as it passes near ...being bound or slung should obscure accurate measure.... and wouldn't that measure of close objects be similar to measuring the growth of a babies fingernail in order to measure the overall growth of the entire baby ?
Very interesting, i would love to come back every 500 years, and see all the new ideas, and advancements in science, Technology, and medicine, providing that we do not destroy ourselves in the meantime, but as we only live in between the seconds, who knows.!!!
What category of analysis would one apply to the synchronized flight of a massive flock of birds? The behavior of each individual bird might be known as a function of what it senses from the other birds, but that does not explain any particular instance of the path of the entire flock. Or does it?
Interestingly, there was fairly recently an article on phys.org about a study that determined that flock behavior depends on individual birds reacting to the birds immediately next to them - there's no mechanism "higher" than that. Seems to be a reductionistic mechanism.
@@MichaelPiz , Could be, but does that explain the variation in the overall directions, the pick of a leader, etc? Is that really the way to understand the group behavior?
@@factChecker01 Not being anything like knowledgeable in that field, I'm not claiming anything one way or the other, just pointing out that the study relates closely to the topic and to your original comment.
@@factChecker01 It could explain the entire flock, though, if by following their immediate neighbors the bird "out front" changing direction causes all the others to change as they react to their immediate neighbors. I have observed on my own that a direction change does sort of "flow" through a flock. Not all the birds turn at the same instant.
@@MichaelPiz , It's a very interesting subject. The behavior of the "leader" might also be influenced by the behavior of the one beside him or behind him. The behavior of those neighbors might, in turn, be influenced by all their neighboring birds. So the behavior of an individual can only be known when a compatible behavior of the entire group is determined. This is a lot like the study of fluid flow. The solution to those problems is one that gives a completely compatible behavior of the entire group together.
There r at least 3 types of reductionism...1 methodological reductionism 2)theory reductionism 3) ontological reductionism mam...but in ur description u said only 2...is it?
Looking at „intentional“ systems like organisms or technical entities, reductionism seems to be not the only way to deal with those things. You can ask for the purpose of an organelle, an organ or a technical component. These questions have a defined borderline. You may ask for the purpose of certain bone or muscle in a given context of a body, but you cannot ask for the purpose of humans, without drifting into esoterism. But there is another way of looking at nature: Dividing into absolute and relative. Absoluteness decouples from certain constraints by the presence of a certain ubiquity. For instance: Having an ubiquitous amount of processor capacity, main memory, storage and network connectivity, make search engines become possible. Search engines again decouple the acquisition of information from spatial restrictions. Another way of using this Four-ressource ubiquity is to establish virtualization. Virtualized software can now roam freely among the hardware concretions. Peter Ward with his medea hypothesis contemplates the reversibility of absoluteness. Higher organisms will inevitably vanish, when the earth turns into an overheated baking oven with less oxygen and a big amount of hydrogen sulfide evaporating from purple seas. By the way, absoluteness explains compelling why sustainable industry is an oxymoron. Industrialization can be defined as „getting rid of sustainability by making vertically stored commodities ubiquitous“.
Nice video! One sentence make me think a lot: "The constituents of a system determine how the system work"- That is trivially true, but this doesn't mean that a system is always the sum of its part. Like you, I don't believe in "strong emergence" but there is one experiment that produce me some "troubles" because it bring my "belief" in reductionism at the very limit. I think about the Alain Aspect experiment (violation of Bell's inequalities). I don't even mean the mystery on non-locality, I just mean that the system cannot be divided in its components. It seems that this is an example of a system that is more that the sum of its part (and you cannot understand it by studying both particles separately). Of course you can compute the behavior of the system by using QM so the behavior of the system IS computable from a fundamental theory (because entanglement is part of the equation) but there is no way for someone who study only one of the two particle (without knowledge about QM) to create a fundamental theory in order to deduce the emergence property of the system (entanglement). Is this a kind of strong emergence? I would really appreciate to have your opinion about this.
Reductionism IS a philosophy (as are determinism, materialism and many other philosophical thesis valuables for sciences). The opposite of REDUCTIONISM is ORGANICISM, wich states that parts can be understood from a totality (like the the organs in the body, or a word within a context). What is the "good strategy"? Oh boy!.... This problem has been treated for long (Aristotle vs. Democritus), and never done for good, because it can´t be. Occidental academic philosophy used to split the "method" in two parts, and each science inherit one or both moments of it. resolutio-compositio (scholasticism), analysis-synthesis (german philosophy), deconstruction-interpretation (postmodernism). You, young physicists, just happen to live in the analitic end of the matter, and can´t scape
Chess is a good analogy here: How the pieces work and the general goals and special rules (promotion of pawns, etc.) are the "reductionist" portions, while the strategies and tactics to win in given combinations to reach the ultimate goal (checkmate your opponent) are "meta-rules" that require overall understanding of the entire board configuration at any moment. One can think of the reductionist rules are for "particles" and the meta-rules are for "waves" in regards to quantum mechanics, for example.
And the fun thing is that you can also look at it that the strategies "emerge" from the basic rules of the pieces and board. Particles and waves are not quite accurate though. They are separate things. Particles are the actual object, waves are the probability distribution of some characteristic. So if anything, a waveform is a reduction from its particle.
@@obsidianjane2267 Patterns. Waves can have many more complex interactions over a wide range of distances, areas, and volumes that can affect a particle, which is only a really effective modifier very close to it. The wide-ranging interactions from wave effects cause much more of the complex effects over the entire universe, most especially electromagnetic wave interaction over a distance. Thus, waves can have much more "meta-rule"-type effects than particles (waves rule the board in many directions at once, while particles rule only nearby or very narrow-focused distant objects on the board).
@@obsidianjane2267 Yes, ALL the interactions with the entire system it is part of, creating "beat frequency" modulations with ALL other objects in the vicinity, which are sometimes rather far away, which is my point, since ALL of these effects contribute to the particle's motion and other changeable parameters continuously. Waves are by definition non-localizable beyond a very significant area, as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states, unlike point particles.
@@nathanokun8801 Wave equations are descriptors of a quantized particle. They are one and the same. If you freeze a particle wave in time (ie; you measure it) it collapses into a point. Because it was always a discrete particle.
Dr. Hossenfelder, it would be very interesting if you had a conversation with Eric Wienstien about his ideas of theortical physics. It looks likes you have tweeted at each other before, I was curious if you were interested in doing a podcast conversation together.
Emergence and reductionism are great concepts that helped us explain macro properties like conductivity and temperature during the late 1800’s. But they are not the answer to everything. Humanity came at new crossroads around the early 1900’s, studying the subatomic realm. Here we encountered particle behavior (particle-wave duality, quanta, gravity, quantum entanglement) which we could not fundamentally explain with emergence or any other concept. We circumvented this from the 1920’s onwards by developing complex mathematics (Quantum Physics QP, General Relativity GR) that accurately DESCRIBE this behavior, leading to a jump in applied technology. But fundamentally physicists still do NOT understand what’s beneath all this math. Reluctant to admit failure, they collectively decided that the mathematics of QP and GR itself was ‘fundamental’ and next fudged their way forward with ever more exotic yet flawed theories for the past 100 years. It was a great period for employing hundreds of thousands of ‘scientists’ but that’s all we achieved. Much as the community hates to admit it, the answer to what’s beneath all the math of GR and QP is actually a very simple yet profound one: At university we are taught that there is a ‘fixed’ or ‘synonymous’ relation between the 4 FUNCTIONS of our continuum (Grid, Clock, Potential, Inertia) and the 4 MEASURES (Space, Time, Energy, Mass). However in reality this relation is a DUAL one. When crossing into the subatomic realm, Energy and Space switch in their roles of grid and potential, as do Time and Mass in their role of clock and inertia. As such, we must view the subatomic realm as an ‘Energymass’ continuum where positions are expressed in Energy and where Mass has the function of clock. This is why events appear to happen ‘instantly’ time-wise (e.g. electron quantum leaps) and why we need to resort to probability calculations in quantum physics to yet ‘find’ a particle in spatial terms. It is also the reason why we prefer to use eV’s to describe the location of an electron. Both dual setups are orthogonal (which is why mathematical infinities occur in gauge invariances) and both are valid, yet one of them always dominates over the other. Nevertheless, if we want to fully understand physics, we must learn to think in terms of both orthogonal setups at the same time. We will next demonstrate how this explains all ‘mysterious’ QP behavior: PARTICLE WAVE DUALITY/ THE DOUBLE SLIT EXPERIMENT. Particle wave duality is not related to the particle itself, but to the dual setup of our continuum. Best example is the double slit experiment: The spacetime (ST) trajectory of the particle passing a slit is not defined in the area behind and between the two slits. This is why we see the otherwise weak orthogonal ME continuum setup come to live precisely there, displaying its orthogonal ‘Energy as the grid’ property. Meaning: the energy of the particle becomes the grid itself, orthogonal to the ST trajectory, explaining its wave like patterns and interference lines we observe. That’s all there is to it. QUANTUM LEAP OF ELECTRONS. Movement in our ST continuum is described as: ‘..it takes TIME to move an object from one SPATIAL location to another..’ When inverting functions and measures the very same movement description in the subatomic Energymass continuum becomes: ‘..it take MASS (relativistic mass of incoming photon) to move an object (electron) from one ENERGY location to another..’ Notice there is no time involved here. It takes mass, not time to do this. E=MC2. In our ST continuum the movement equation is: Space (dist)= Time * Speed [m/s]. Switching measures we get the following equivalent speed formula for the Energymass continuum: Energy = Mass * Speed [J/kg = Nm/kg = m2/s2 = C2] so E=MC2. Thus Einstein’s formula of E=MC2 as actually the SPEED formula for the subatomic realm. In other words; any object with Energy in ST is also moving in its orthogonal terms over a distance E, over a period of M. This is why an object with energy has an extra virtual mass term in our experience. We now also see that Energy is fundamentally NOT ‘equivalent’ to Mass any more than Space is equivalent to Time in our continuum. This flawed interpretation may well be humanity’s biggest blunder. The speed formula of E=MC2 is secondary in our ST continuum, yet becomes the dominant speed formula when we force heavy particles to fuse or split form each other, in which case they shortly must cross subatomic distances. Now we understand why we see so much energy released during fusion of fission of nucleides ! GRAVITY. As explained before, gravity is purely the orthogonal speed effect. Any object moving in spacetime will have an orthogonal speed effect of -/- E/kg or -/-m2/s2. So translated back into ST terms this dual term means a compensating virtual accelerated contraction of the spacetime surface in front of it. This is 100% consistent with what Einstein described as ‘length contraction’ in his special relativity. Since also all tiny (subatomic) particles have speed, we get the additional cumulative ST contraction effect inside restmass that appears ‘radial’ , which is what Einstein next perfectly captured in his mathematics of GR concerning restmass. QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT. Quantum entanglement is simply the EM continuum equivalent of what we call ‘locality’ in our ST continuum. To explain: In ST we speak of ‘locality’ when two objects have the same spatial values in all 3 grid directions at the same ‘time moment’. They can then influence each other regardless any difference in energy. If we translate the same sentence for locality towards the ME continuum we get: In the ME continuum we speak of locality when two objects have the same ENERGY (spin) values in all three directions at the same ‘mass moment’. They can then influence each other regardless any difference in space (distance). It is time for scientists to embrace dual physics and make up for a lost century. Project humanity is not making progress right now…
David Deutsch gave the example of an atom of copper in the nose of a statue of Winston Churchill, and argued that no lower level theory could possibly explain why that atom happened to be in a square in London rather than in the ground.
With anything questionable; suddenly past familiar lyrics seem to always spring to mind. Then I am forced to choose between the reasoning of my heart, or the learned logic within my bewildering brain... ''Long Distance Run Around'' & ''Roundabout'' by YES Long distance run around Long time waiting to feel the sound I still remember the dream there I still remember the time you said goodbye Did we really tell lies Letting in the sunshine Did we really count to one hundred Cold summer listening Hot colour melting the anger to stone I still remember the dream there I still remember the time you said goodbye Did we really tell lies Letting in the sunshine Did we really count to one hundred Looking for the sunshine Along the drifting cloud the eagle searching down on the land Catching the swirling wind the sailor sees the rim of the land The eagle's dancing wings create as weather spins out of hand Go closer hold the land feel partly no more than grains of sand We stand to lose all time a thousand answers by in our hand Next to your deeper fears we stand surrounded by million years :Album ''Fragile'' (1971) ''Confusion's Focus often finds me captured between the microscope & the telescope; between the inner cages of the atom; between the expanded loneliness' of outer space.''-gilpin 4920 But as the recently late artist John Prine had said in his song ''Illegal Smile''... But for-tun-ate-ly, Iv'e got the key, to escape, reality. Happy Quarantined Days of Unleavened Bread 2020 -...tTt...
I think there are examples of the opposite of methodological reductionism, like conclusions about the structure of genetic material being made by observing how hereditary traits work.
Perhaps the smallest scales in the universe are somehow balanced out by its largest ones; so that the deeper we probe into reality by discovering smaller and smaller stuff, more things emerge on the macroscopic level(s). It's like every attempt of analysis points in the direction of a new synthesis, and vice versa.
Excellent description of the problem of uncertainty, and precision in Identification of processes that form metastable resonance structures. Inherent circularity positioning, here-now forever Holographic Principle in CCC, cannot be made discrete certainty Theory (no absolutes) in the same way, which is why Science and Technology rely on continuous creation connection mathematical Disproof => Experimental re-construction, in Principle(?).
@ 0:46 A SYSTEM obviously is made out of it's constituents. But it's behaviour is for a large part determined by it's SURROUNDINGS. The probability that Sabine would be here, would be quite small if she had grown up in a less fortunous environment. Of course, she still would have had 2 eyes, 2 arms, 2 ears and 2 legs.
Worth also pointing out that “holism” is not the opposite of “reductionism”, whatever those who like to use the former term may think. You get this particularly with “alternative health” practitioners: they talk about “treating the person as a whole”, which is a pretty nonsensical concept when you realize that “non-alternative” medicine (i.e. “medicine that works”) includes epidemiology, which looks at how diseases spread between people, rather than just treating them in isolation. I don’t think the “alternative” crowd have come up with an “alternative epidemiology” yet; their concept of “holism” hasn’t progressed beyond looking at individuals in isolation.
Hey Sabine, has anyone described what the rear of a light beam would look like? If I turned on a beam of light, I can imagine it travelling at the speed of light as it speeds thru space. But, when I turn it off and I observe the beam from its source, what would I see?
I imagine that its relative speed would create a massive redshift due to the Doppler Effect, meaning that if you could actually observe its 'back', you could only detect it as long radio waves or something, and not as visible light.
@@brozbro Yes, but now you're talking about large objects continuously emitting light, which is quite different. Your original query was about a single beam of light.
@@tsopmocful1958 Anyway, you're making this literal when I'm trying to be theoretical. Einstein imagined riding on a light beam. Imagine standing behind a huge spotlight if that helps.
@@brozbro Yes, a spotlight is the kind of thing I was imagining, and what I thought you meant. And I also know that this is just a thought experiment. The trouble is of course, that I'm not a physicist, so I am probably completely wrong about my following guesses. If we pointed a spotlight at the Moon and turned it on for let's say 10 seconds and then turned it off, the light beam would appear to just vanish straight away as usual when we turn off a light, because light moves so fast. But I assume that if the spotlight is strong enough to be seen from the Moon (with a telescope or whatever), the distance means that it would appear and disappear a couple of seconds after it was turned on and turned off on Earth. That must mean that within that couple of seconds, there must be a 10 second 'parcel' of photons travelling through space with a beginning and end, with less photons after some have been scattered or diffracted by the atmosphere or by things like dust in space. Of course anyone in front of that parcel would only see the light when the parcel hits their eyes or instrument. But what I assume you are asking is what we would see if we could look at the parcel from behind it as it moved through space. Naturally though, it would move so fast and disappear into the distance so quickly that we would either have to keep pace with it somehow to observe its 'behind', or else have a very high speed recording device so we can look at a 'photo' of its 'behind' taken before it speeds away. Now we know that stars or galaxies that are moving either towards or away from us have their emitted light waves compressed or stretched by the Doppler Effect, which causes 'blueshift' in those approaching and 'redshift' in those receding away, and due to the expanding universe, galaxies further away recede faster, which increases the redshift until they get quite dim as they approach the infrared spectrum. So going by all that, I imagine that our single parcel of light would be moving away so fast (speed of light), its redshift would be so great that it would be way beyond the visible spectrum. Even beyond the infrared and into radio waves. So if it could be detected at all, I think that the 'back' of a light beam moving away from us could only be radio waves or frequencies even longer than that, and certainly not visible to our eyes.
Late to the party but it strikes me as enormously curious that reduction is a term wielded by both the arts and the sciences and yet the scientific understanding of it differs so strongly from how it is understood in the arts, to the extent that to be reductive is effectively and distinctively a slur over there, yet it's supposedly highly-valued over here. I'm getting the impression that you either weren't aware of this difference in understanding when you made this video or were implicitly dismissive of it, and I wonder what discussion might look like if we brought that to the fore. What are your thoughts on this? I'll be checking your later videos to see if you've said anything later on!
Sabine Hossenfelder is very talented and composes wonderful songs. But she is also a scientist who in 2008 laid the foundations for a cosmological model where the universe is made up of a mixture of positive and negative masses. It is then described not, like Albert Einstein's model which is summarized by a single field equation, but by a system of two coupled field equations. From this angle Sabine is therefore the successor of Albert Einstein. But she could not build from her model elements that could be compared with the observations. In France, we developed in 2014 a system also based on similar equations that we have exploited with great success by showing a dozen points where it matches observational data. Sabine accused us of plagiarizing her own model. But these two systems are not identical. So we looked at how our model could be considered a special case of her model, which would not bother us at all. But we were unable to show it. Sabine may hold the key to this case. Under these conditions she should, as we have asked her several times, publish an article showing this and we would be happy if this story could be cleared up in good faith because this accusation of plagiarism, formulated in the emails she sends to correspondents, puts us in a very unpleasant situation. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
So you and the scientific community can really explain every property in biology in physical terms? It's not just a story you guys tell each other? By 'really explain' I mean that you guys have already a system which explains each step from physics to biology? You can derive every biological property from the laws of physics? And how do you proof that? Can you refer to any books or papers in which such a derivation is worked out extensively?
What would it look like if reductionism were to fail for something? Perhaps if something had components, but their behavior was easier to understand by reducing it to the behavior of the thing of which they are components, rather than the behavior of the thing that they comprise being understandable in terms of the behavior of the components? Though, I suppose there is then the question of what we mean by “component”? Is it logically possible to describe a world in which things have components, but for which reductionism fails?
I think yiou can apply it to waves; and areas of space; could it be we dont see alien live because reductionism or vice versa is used to access a space time area specifically for travel; and the alien life we see if any is just todays first experiments..
When constraints prevent something from happening, that something can't be analyzed or reduced because it doesn't exist. When you break down an organism into its constituent parts, you are braking down the constraints that used to prevent something from happening - you don't even know what that was. You end up studying something totally different from what you started with because the broken down constraints could allow the interactions to happen, that weren't even the primary interactions that the system was trying to prevent in the first place before it was broken apart. Furthermore, everything in an organism has multiple functions. So, there is more than one way to break things down. Each way revealing something different. Yet even more, each "part" of the organism depends on the other parts to be maintained. As soon as you start breaking things down, the so called parts begin to degrade raising the question as to whether you are studying what you intended to study in the first place.
When people do take reductionism as a philosophy, they might well believe that the particles that make up matter are more "real" than the matter itself, and that the quantum field fluctuations that make up the "particles" are more "real" than the particles. The quantum field fluctuations are no more real than rocks or streams, or you or I. Reality consists of realms within realms, ad infinitum. None of these realms obstruct any other.
With the problem of measurement or entanglement, doesn't quantum physics have holistic, therefore anti-reductionist aspects? And if quantum physics is anti-reductionist, what about the rest of the sciences that would consider it as their physical basis?
That last line was so on point Professor. Thank u for talking on this topic.
Sweta Satpathy yes professor has very well stated points of clarifications....
On the other hand, she strongly suggested that a "may not" is the same as a "will not", which is obviously wrong (and presumably why she only suggested it).
The page Physics of the "COSMOS" has given the following writing the thumbs up on it's page. Excellent.
WHY TIME DILATION ALSO PROVES THAT ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY:
Energy has/involves GRAVITY, AND ENERGY has/involves inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE. "Mass"/ENERGY involves BALANCED inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE consistent WITH/AS what is BALANCED ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL FORCE/ENERGY, AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. E=mc2 is DIRECTLY AND FUNDAMENTALLY DERIVED FROM F=ma. F=ma AND E=mc2 PROVE that ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. So, time dilation ALSO proves that GRAVITY IS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY; as gravity and ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY are linked AND BALANCED IN AND OUT of SPACE AND TIME; AS ALL of SPACE is NECESSARILY ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL (IN BALANCE); AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. ACCORDINGLY, gravity/acceleration involves BALANCED inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE; AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. MOREOVER, GRAVITATIONAL force/ENERGY IS proportional to (or BALANCED with/as) inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE; AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. This ALSO explains the cosmological redshift AND the "black hole(s)". "Mass"/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. This explains time dilation, as ALL of SPACE is NECESSARILY ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL (IN BALANCE); AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY.
By Frank DiMeglio
She doesn't understand physics.
@@frankdimeglio8216 So, in order to "understand" physics, she has to acknowledge that gravity is not real and merely a product of electromagnetic interactions? That is the most absurd statement I've ever heard.
How about you share ONE scholarly article that tackles this concept?
I discovered your channel yesterday, and I'm already a huge fan. Please continue to produce your excellent, thoughtful content.
You have a real talent for teaching. The more remarkable in that you are teaching in a second language. I admire that.
I am only at the 12th second of the video but immediately I proceed to give you a thumb up.
You made my day in this sad quarantine
This topic is so interesting. I really enjoyed this video and the previous one on Emergence.
A bit of a slinky outfit this time for 100% focus on the topic.
Now I tackle the very subject of this video. Reductionism is a philosophical doctrine. There are others, and none of them enter in conflict with science. We can't know for certain whether reductionism is "successful", we have to compare it with something else that could be more successful. It is only a work hypothesis, that could be repelled in the future. In any case, telling that the final explanation of a living cell is necessarily reductionist is just a wild theory: we don't know, and there is no way to know. That's just the reason why reductionism is philosophy. I have seen in others video that Sabine rejects some ideas on the only ground that they are incompatible with reductionism, that is plain circular reasoning. The truth is that reductionism fails in many branches of science, starting from biology. Auguste Comte who is a true philosopher in addition to being a sociologist knew that a long time ago, and proposed the positivism doctrine which is different from reductionism, although it is still more successful, in particular in quantum mechanics. Actually, and it is my second conclusion, reductionism is metaphysical, it postulates things that can't be observed, viz. the ultimate components of "Nature" and elementary relations among them.
Yes. Good post. Reductionism is a useful tool in some cases. However, it is wrong to conclude that all secrets yield to its power--that isn't science, it's scientism.
@@neptasur In the case of quantum mechanics, reductionism doesn't work. There is no way to explain the measurements by simpler processes. The wavefunction is but a mathematical fiction, and anyway its collapse is not simpler. The entanglement is the explicit impossibility to separate the components of the system. That's why the Solvay congress opted for the positivism.
@@clmasse Science itself is a mathematical abstraction of reality. But there is no shortage of people who presume that science give us access to reality directly. What is science doing by positing idealized conditions that don't really exist if not attempting to find the nature of things that mathematical explaintions don't themselves provide?
The problem with reductionism as an ultimate explaination can easily be seen by appeal to laws of nature: If particle A explains particle B; and particle B explains particle C; and particle C is explained by "laws of nature", why not just start the whole thing by saying particle A is explained by magic? It's just as good in terms of an attempt at an explaination of everything.
Another excellent video, Sabine. I look forward to more!
She is such a good communicator. I always learn from these videos.
Sabine Hossenfelder is a brilliant woman! She explains wells, she talks well! She is just great! Keep up!
I'm not an academic philosopher but I feel confident in asserting that virtually all academic philosophers would disagree that reductionism is not philosophical. And not because they are stupid but because they have arguments which you probably have not yet considered. Maybe even perspectives which you have not seen so far.
Something can seem absolutely clear but that does not prevent it from being philosophical too.
Philosophy isn't primarily about making scientific predictions and evaluating if they hold up (especially the first part is science's job), but about challenging our perspectives, and such things (though I guess there are also philosophers who would disagree with that description)
I don't understand why she thinks that calling reductionism an hypothesis makes it necessarily non-philosophical as if the two were mutually exclusive.
UncleZhou49
It seems to me that most often this kind of ignorance comes from a lack of exposure to philosophy and unwillingness to consider perspectives outside of science / empiricism. To be fair, it can seem very unattractive to engage with philosophy if you don't come across arguments which challenge your valued perspectives specifically, AND in a way which you can understand despite not knowing the jargon and holding a "this is so dumb"-bias.
But even if people are a product of their environment in that way, I still absolutely hate this because it goes directly against any notion of intellectual humility and awareness of the extent of your unawareness. And we're gonna have an increasingly bad time on this planet if people (and especially those revered in science) remain unaware to such an extent and won't check their assumptions at least some of the times before jumping to conclusions.
@@manso306 Thanks, A. Horse for your thoughtful comment.
@@UncleZhou49 A lot, and I do mean a lot of scientists, especially physicist journalists (they write pop books) are totally ignorant about philosophy. The late Stephen Hawking said in his book THE GRAND DESIGN that philosophy was dead, never realizing he had just made a self stultifying philosophical statement. Larry Krause dismisses and despises philosophy all the while using rules of science determined by philosophy. Most scientists would do well to take a Philosophy 101, the art of critical thinking class.
A quick introduction plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/
Sabine, I don’t know quite how to say it without sounding trite, or silly, but holy crap! Thanks for being so awesome, I love your work here! Please keep it up! You are wonderful!
your welcome
I’m so happy when there’s a new Sabine video!
"A lot of people seem to think that reductionism is a philosophy, but it most definitely is not"
How does someone so educated make that type of claim? Reductionism is absolutely a mode of philosophy. At least engage with someone like Dennett, who aims to push a materialist conception of reality. Just read Nagle's bat essay to get some sort of idea as to why reductionism just terminates at a certain point.
I could listen to you all day! Another Great Talk!
0:54 The constituents, and also how they are put together. There is an old engineering adage that, in any system, complexity derives not so much from the number of components, as in how they interact with one another. So when designing a system, the “KISS Principle” is more about keeping those interactions under strict control, than simply minimizing the number of components.
I don't know enough to say whether your conclusion is correct, or not, but I appreciate that you brought this subject up. It is a very fascinating topic, simply because it has been so important to scientific advancement for a long time, and reducing it to its constituents is helpful in understanding it better.
Love the ending. Way to stir the pot.
Sabine's videos are much easier to understand and comprehend what she's saying than other ones like PBS Space Time.
The fact that complications exist when scaling up is why we have different domains of science, rather than everything simply being very difficult quantum mechanics. We approximate the results from quantum mechanics when we propose 'laws' of chemistry, biology, etc.
That was some top tier determinism she threw in saying that the calculations would take too long to predict the outcome of an election with particle theory. Particles don't make decisions.
this lecture and many more on your channel should be mandatory to be tought AND understood for everyone
Yes, Sabine, your commentary is approximately good.
No matter how you call it, either "methodological reductionism" or "Theoretical reductionism", etc, all of it and all of them, are part of the human logic. When one talks about human logic, no matter how one does it, shouldn't lose the sight of the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of it : the LOGICAL CHAIN that SHOULDN'T be broken no matter what ! NEVER EVER !
When the logical chain is broken, like the one aplied in the human science ( so-called "science", because from a point in the human history is more like a religion ! ) after the briliant mind of Galileo Galilei, all hell of compounded and accumulated errors breaks loose and the more you go deeper and deeper with the reductionism in any form, the more you depart from the real manifestation of the universal phenomena of the Universe, at any scale ( micro and macro ).
The right approach would be to stop saying that a "scientific" theory is a good one the moment the real logical chain of cause and effect is broken.
For example, the chain of cause and effect is broken when the current relativity theory predict an "infinitesimal energy point" of the begining of the so-called Universe, or for the model of a "Black Hole" where the Einstein theory predict a point of gravitational singularity where the curvature of "space-time" is INFINITE ( ?!?! ) or for the dilation of the inexistent "time".
Wouldn't be better to say that a specific theory is just a human logical approximation of a poor understood real phenomenon ?
What if at the center of the Galaxies there's nothing ( I mean "almost nothing" or a very high and local entropic state ) and the disintegration of matter there is just a normal dynamical phenomena of a lack of very strong directional entropy resulted from the normal dynamic of the natural creation and evolution of an absolutely free material aggregation in the universal "space" ?
Or for the existence of the non-existence real "time ? What if we say that "time" doesn't exist in reality and build an explanation of real phenomena based on this reality that doesn't break the real logical chain ?
What if in the case of the inexistent "Bing Bang", a theory of "deep and almost infinite-energy" that has a normal never-ending real cause and effect is employed ?
Because, in the end, can anything stop the universal chain of "cause and effect" ? Can anybody believe the humongous stupidity that "something" can come from "nothing" ?
Can anybody or anything use the logical chain of any kind of "logical reductionism" to sustain such a huge stupidity ?
From what I see in the last approximately 5 centuries yes, it can !
You said quite a lot in such a brief amount of time … I will definitely be viewing this again (and again) to gain a better understanding of what you mean … Thanks for making me think. 😎👍🏽
John Von Neumann relied heavily on these strategies for his discoveries.
I am amazed how the elements were ever isolated, because when you get a load of something from the ground it may be a lot of things mixed up. But it is essential to identify the pure elements to use them and study their properties and develop atomic theory.
The concept of multiple discovery or multiple invention, is one I wish Sabine would do a video on someday. I believe it has much to offer to the idea of Determinism.
Great video, and looking amazing as usual
I can think of at least one field where reductionism has been counterproductive. That is health care. Doctors no longer treat a sick patient. They treat organs. All the diagnostics, tests, medicines and specialisations are narrowly focused on one organ, sometimes, one of its functions. This kind of reductionist approach has made health care prohibitively expensive.
This is the only channel that, when a new video comes up I click on it, no matter what.
P.S. You're a very snappy dresser.
I watched for the dress.... then learned something. Thanks Dr.
As an electronics technician I've had to employ both types of reductionism simultaneously to arrive at an accurate diagnosis of the cause of problems within a system, and craft an adequate workaround. This is something that electronics technician are quite adept at doing (the good techs at least). Believe it or not but intuition actually factors into this as well.
Many theories are derived first from intuition then proven through reductionism. Perhaps your next video will address intuition?
Sabine has just made me to fall in love with physics....fall for her
Combustion moves in all areas, wheels and gears makes combustion a tameable energy. Without the right combination of parts the explosions (engine combustion) won't move forward. Emergence is the process where all parts come together to have the car-effect to manifest, mainly because of its favourable outcome. The parts are less likely to become a more repeatedly emergent part in the environment (earth surface) if it were not because it helps a more powerful whole to emerge a car. We can also have a sail on a bathtub as a boat but the odds aren't so favourable thus occurring less. In classical physics, flow requires substance, substance can have patterns and patterns can be cyclical thus more permanent, the patterns are the emergent qualities. A chair is not a hole in the ground, it's a platform elevated with legs to rest on top of, only because our legs allow us to sit. Emergence is a pattern of cause and effect that guarantees favorable outcome mainly a system that self affects more than it interacts with simpler les potent flows from the environment (thinking of point where energy becomes mass) Emergence Is a beautiful symphony, and reductionism is becoming aware of the parts that come together favorably and thus more common to repeat since it's a incremental step from chaos to order. It's in 'favorable odds' that emergence gets its substance.
The irony is that reductionism has its roots in aesthetics.
We have a bias toward tidiness and simplicity that has nothing really to do with rigor.
We just prefer parsimony.
Really?
1.
Perhaps the most simple answer to all questions is "Allah did it". And some consider it the most aesthetic one.
2.
Simplicity guides us to physics only under a set of much narrower constraints, like the theory should be quantitative...
3.
Ornaments (in science) usually means someone is cheating.
4.
It works.
@@meahoola
Note the qualifier, 'irony.'
Our expectation if we didn't have the bias that parsimony is beautiful would be that a particle 'zoo' need not have some tidier underlying mechanism.
Simplicity does work... except when it doesn't.
@@meahoola I don't think most people think that the fundamental equations of physics are simple. Probably they don't even think they are aesthetic. It takes a mind mathematically schooled for years into sophisticated intuitions to see the simplicity, that a single insight can tie so much together.
- Yes, I also use parsimony as seasoning to improve the flavor of my soups.
@@ablebaker8664 OTOH; its entirely possible that the subatomic basis of matter/energy is cleverly simplist.... parsimonious, and our convoluted zoo of particles is an artifact of that our math and basic assumptions are wrong.
Above that, our perception of reality is that objects and systems are discrete and atomic so reductionism is a useful tool of deduction and logic.
Reductionism is a new name for the ancient argument about defining the thing in itself which goes back to Heraclitus vs Parmenides. 😎
Reductionism is a worldview which has been barreling through human interest of seeking the ultimate arche. There's nothing new. Of course it's a philosophy though materialist scientists are quite alien to the notion... probably they have never heard of Heraclitus Parmenides Democretus Zeno. They maintained the same belief
I loved this video .. its so basic and must be taught in university in the very beginning. You look lovely Dr. Sabine :)
1:29 And then you have levels above that of individual organisms: “ecology’, how organisms interact with each other; “biophysics”, about how they operate and interrelate to their environment as part of a physical system, subject to the usual physical laws.
I learn something new and something old every time I watch your videos...Thanks
There's a very important point to note here: while of course Reductionism can even be a scientific approach, normally, when someone discusses "reductionism" in a conversation, they are talking about assuming that a problem can be solved only using a part of the involved elements or assuming the elements they know or prefer are the only ones involved in the issue.
Could you produce an essay/video on de Broglie Pilot Wave Theory/Bohmian Mechanics? Are there some modern physicists that look at the deterministic approach to calculate wave functions and guide functions and apply that in their development of theory?
A pleasure to listen to and to watch!!!! Thank you!!!
There are also two types of "methodological" reductionism:
"descriptive" reductionism: describing the apparent properties of a macroscopic object in terms of the apparent properties of its constituent parts, which (almost) always fails; and
"functional/causal reductionism": describing the dynamics/behaviour of a macroscopic object in terms of the interactions between its constituent parts, which (at least in principle) always works.
Thanks for this info. Perhaps you, or anybody, could suggest some authors or references on the two types of methodological reductionism, especially something relevant to the measurement problem, physics more broadly, or cognitive science. I do read stuff like this, in trying to decide if linguistic semantics reduces to something non-linguistic.
@@fbkintanar I don't have any references for this, sorry - I came up with this distinction all by myself! [It may not be a new idea (others may have thought of it), but I don't know who they are.] That said, on a sufficiently nuanced definition of "reduction" (e.g., Sabine's) and of just what kinds of things can be "reduced", I think the distinction is a natural one.
Thank you very much. Your videos are my most anticipated content on the web.
Another great video and a great follow up to the previous one about emergence.
Would you consider the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection as an example of Theory Reductionism? I tend to think that Evolution is not related to Methodological Reductionism, since it is not necessarily related to any process of dismantling things apart.
Thank you for clearing this up.
I'm still not clear on the definition of theory reductionism. You said (3:14) "methodological reductionism is about the properties of the real world," so did you mean to imply that theory reductionism is not about the real world, i.e. it is only about mathematical theories? I thought science was all about methodological reductionism -- trying to explain a gestalt phenomenon by trying to model it's constituent parts. Would Einstein's theory of general relativity be a methodological reduction of classical mechanics? Can you provide examples of theory reductionism in science or in mathematics? Would David Hilbert's program to resolve certain logical paradoxes using Zermelo-Frankel Set Theory be an example of theory reductionism? How about in theoretical physics?
The idea is rooted in philosophy which is the transition from mythos to logos, to explain x in terms of y:
"The term ‘reduction’ as used in philosophy expresses the idea that if an entity x reduces to an entity y then y is in a sense prior to x, is more basic than x, is such that x fully depends upon it or is constituted by it. Saying that x reduces to y typically implies that x is nothing more than y or nothing over and above y."
And y can of course be a set of further intertwined things.
When applied to consciousness this method creates all sorts of problems for the scientific method by "explaining" things by referring to other simpler things (transitivity), without loosing something during this process.
More on this: plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/
you have explained this perfectly and solidified my understanding.
-"Reductionism is not a philosophy"
That's what happens when a scientist talks like a great metaphysicist!
Great follow up to your previous video on emergence. Is there a place where I can read up on this distinction between methodological and theory reductionism? And what is a methodological reduction (e.g. of Darwinian natural selection to biochemistry and homeostasis; or the emergence of life) when there may not be, for the foreseeable future, any practical mathematically-precise theories for the reducer and the reducee? Perhaps (a large part of) science works at the level of conceptual reductions that are not always equivalent to (mathematical) theory reductions.
I do think these distinctions helps us make progress on phenomenology (in the physicists' sense) of theoretical claims about open problems in science, not just physics but beyond (e.g. earth science on a Gaia-hypothesis planet, biology, and cognitive science, which are domains where the notion of emergence is kicked about a lot recently). So kudos on the work you are doing. But I worry that other sciences may be distracted by "physics-envy"; there is not enough reason to expect that all realms of investigation are amenable to physics-like mathematical characterizations. In particular, unlike physics and chemistry, many other sciences seem to have an intrinsic reliance on historical-local modes of scientific explanation, where the physics-model of science is precisely the search for repeatable-experiment-based universal explanations. For example, Darwinian insights about patterns in biology are explanatory because they relate to *this* phylogenetic tree on *this* watery planet with its oxygen rich atmosphere. This guides our choice of what scientific, technological and daily-life problems are worth our attention and efforts, even if they "supervene upon" or emerge from biochemistry and homeostasis. Reducing part of the biological pattern to nonhistorical-universal biochemistry does not remove or dissolve the power of historical explanations, relative to this tree of life on this planetary biosphere. If we detect a phylogeny on some distant exoplanet, *that* tree doesn't really explain (historical, important aspects) of patterns of life on this planet. We still need to explain relative to *this* phylogenetic tree on *this* planet if we are to act on a time-scale of human history. We can't wait for light-centuries to get our answers from facts on distant exoplanets.
It's like sunsets and celestial mechanics, time-zones and relativistic notions of time. Just because we have physical reductions of measurable phenomena doesn't dissolve the power of conceptual explanations. Ultimately, the formal-mathematical level of physical theories needs to be translated in to a expository-conceptual level, and be made comprehesible to cognitive agents; so physics itself can benefit from paying attention to levels beyond mathematical formalisms. Certainly the measurement problem seems to require some attention to cognition. Personally, I don't think conscious observers have any causal role in making observed states "real", that can be explained by the macro-scale measurement devices used in quantum experiments (and maybe someday quantum computations). But the devices are artifacts designed and calibrated to specific measurable attributes to the exclusion of all others, and they are designed and built by cognizing researchers guided by conceptual explanations for what the flashes and squiggles on the device display mean. The practices of laboratories and the artifacts of instrumentation provide an inescapable context for physics as an explanatory science, performed by human actors. Contextuality, both conceptual and maybe mathematically modeled, may play an important role in explaining nonlocal quantum states (e.g. Samson Abramsky and Bob Coecke on categorical quantum mechanics, or Robert Spekkens and the psi-epistemic approach you mention in one [which?] of your videos).
I tend to think that the role of (or direction of causal reasoning in) the kind of theory reductionism that doesn't go hand in hand with methodological reduction might be the following: The analog of the "smaller" component is a relatively simple system (call it A). Now we wish to see if we can explain a more complex system B which 1) has some emergent simplicities/regularities (so is interestingly non-random), and for which 2) the emergent simplicities of the complex system B are in some way causally dependent on some of the properties/behaviours of our originally characterized relatively simple system A. We normally think of the system B, which is more complex than A, as being analogous to the "whole" in part-whole methodological reductionism but it is only an analogy, since the simpler system A need not be a physical part of B and simple system A need not be smaller than B but could rather be surrounding it or inter-mixed with it or what have you. The (theory) reductionist claim is that we think of (some) crucial properties of system A as being causal of the constraints/simplicities of B. And yet there is the question of whether the causality also may go "downward" from more complex (and dependent) system B to system A in some sense. There may be cases where simple system A is present in the environment with more probability, and is constrained in its form/behaviour, partly by reason of it helping cause a particular type of complex system B "around" it or weakly interacting with it. In the time evolution of interdependent systems A and B, both may cause each other (at least somewhat e.g. cause each others' stability) in a virtuous "symbiotic-by-analogy" circle. Although the causality may very well be circular (that seems like the most likely case for often-seen, stable system pairs) we can think of it somewhat as reductionism because we admitted that compared to A, B has complexity not related to A, as well as a partial dependence on A. So B has the same partial causal dependence relationship to A as a whole has to a part. As an aside, before doing this kind of reasoning, one has to have good principles as to where one draws the boundaries of system A and system B. Why are they not just collectively system C? For this "system individuation/delineation/scoping" question we need ideas like the boundary (physical or property-definitional) at which each system is at least semi-autonomous (in self-causing its stability as the type of system); the boundary at which the system is only loosely causally coupled to other systems. So while there may be causal dependency between A and B, it may be for example only based on a small subset of the whole essential set of autopoietic (self-causal) properties of A and related to only a small subset of the essential properties of system B. And vice versa. Or the causality may have a lot of substitutability or be only stochastic, or weak in some other sense, relative to the strong inter-causality within each system type A and B.
can QCD be broken down into with reductionism? Its my impression its wholey non-perturbative?
*_I would love have a professor like you._*
Herbert Simon's "The Sciences of the Artificial" is a help in understanding the relationship between various levels of a system, and how complex behaviour can evolve from simplicity.
This is one of the very few videos by Sabine where, imho, her (small) intellectual bias shows.
She obviously (and with very good reasons) prefers research in cosmology to research in particle physics, and her separating methodological reductionism (which looks at smaller elements) from theoretical reductionism (which can work with large scale phenomena) reflects her preference.
However, I think this is just a philosophical opinion, not a fact about scientific success. She wants to consider both as equally scientific forms of reduction, but she uses a weak philosophical argument to express their difference and her preference.
The fact is, she defends reductionism because it has always worked extremely well. But then she says that larger scale phenomena are not always reduced to their components, out of convenience. Well, if the criterion is what works, what is convenient, both reductionism and non-reductionism work and thus they are both acceptable. They simply fail to work where they cannot be applied. One does not explain traffic, sociological change, political decision making with particle physics, just as one does not explain relativity with quantum mechanics.
It's really not about choosing between two forms of reductionism - it's about choosing between several different models of reality that are not easily placed in a top-bottom hierarchical scheme (large objects top - quanta bottom; or: social behaviour top - laws of physics bottom).
I think the complexity of different forms of human knowledge speaks strongly against all reductionism, not just against sticking to /one/ reductionism.
Your criticism of Reductionism is perfectly suited to denounce the criticisms some people have on the claims that consciousness is an emergent property that cannot be applied to the individual components of the functioning brain from which consciousness emerges.
BTW.......you make that dress look fantabulous!
Reductionism justifies panpsychism??
@@TheodorReik I don't see how it's possible unless one could prove that the individual physical elements and forms of energy (such as "bioelectrical signals") which work together to produce the emergent phenomenon we label "consciousness" must necessarily also be an emergent phenomenon identical to what we already label "consciousness". Until then, I see no good reason to accept panpsychism as probable or even possible. Possibility, just as impossibility, need to be demonstrated......not assumed to exist just because we can think a condition up in our mind.
Just listening to an interview with George F. R. Ellis about strong emergence, made my head hurt. Is reductionism easier to understand?
Yes...
If you combine them, do they cancel out each other?
@@mikaluostarinen4858 Only as it applies to jabberwocks. ;)
@@SabineHossenfelder Sabine I hope you don't think I'm a troll. But your single word answer is fundamentally wrong. What we perceive as complex emergence is simple emergence disguised within a complex system. It's smoking mirrors. Modern physics has become obsessed with reductionism before it it has done its due diligence in larger macroscopic systems. Condensed matter chemistry/physics being a beacon of hope. The barriers we see in 'complex emergence' is because we are 'normal' scientists blinded by a flawed paradigm. It's easier to ask the correct questions, find new answers and complete theories through emergence before we embark on proof through reductionism. Our current reductionist understanding does not tie with reality and never will. It's fundamentally flawed.
What you appear to be saying for theory reductionism is that theories in physics tend to have a reduction in complexity over time as they become better explained with simpler, more reaching concepts. And then there is the observation that there can be no basis for an assumption that theories will necessarily maintain that kind of reductionism or lower complexity because physical observation is necessarily independent from theory.
How is reductionism the opposite of emergence? It seems that week emergence and reductionism is two ways of describing the same thing.
The are different perspectives, "top down" vs. "bottom up", or "I have a thing that does this because its made of that." vs. "There are these things that add up to that."
Like any other tool or model, they have different uses depending on what you are trying to describe. The nature of the whole or the constituents.
@@obsidianjane2267 Thanks, Obsidian. To me it's like saying, 70% or 1.0 - 0.3. They're two different ways of saying the same thing. It seems in each case you posit and test the principle that the larger is determined by its smaller constituents.
@@austin3789 Yes, the two are not adversarial concepts. Which is used depends on what your subject or thesis is. The entire system or the constituents.
Will you do a video on determinism?
Does she have a choice? ;)
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 ahahah It depends whether she is compatibilist or incompatibilist...
What's the proper termananaligy when comparing like systems?
Brains are comparable to fungi in its neuronal struters use of serotonin like transmitters as well as oxygen consumption
so regardless of the valitaty of that observation is there a word for that system comparision?
Love this professor.
I listen to you and I want some more.
"Biology can be reduced to Chemistry. Chemistry can be reduced to Physics." No, that's wrong. Here's why:
I will post the same comment I made on Sabine's videos about "emergence" and "free will". In this video, Sabrine shows a graphic of reductionist causality from fundamental (atomic) particle -> molecule -> life organism. But it is a classical problem that *nobody* knows how self-organizing life "emerged" from causal interactions at the fundamental particle and molecular scales:
I really like Sabine and the online persona she has created. But she has a very serious problem: She is trying seriously to (re)create, single-handedly, the field of "Philosophy of Science" from her own experience of science practice. Greater minds than hers has similarly stumbled, just to mention Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Pascual Jordan who tried to spin philosophy out of their scientific experience, but with no more than a gymnasia exposure in philosophy up to Kant and no further. For example, there is an entire serious scientific-philosophical literature on "emergentism" going back to Samuel Alexander in the 1920s and continuing forward to the work of Max Delbrück at Cal Tech in the 1970s. She waves this away with a single gesture, and states that there is no single example of strong emergence that is known to science. But of course, the emergence of life from the foundations of chemistry and physics is the classical example of emergentism. There is not yet any causal explanation of how self-organizing life emerged from causal interactions of fundamental particles and molecules. That is how emergentism was proposed in the first place, as at least a placeholder to name the problematic.
If Sabine has solved the problem of the emergence of life, I hope she will quickly put up a video outlining her discovery!
5:00 What do the scientists at CERN think about this video?
They are busy producing ventilators now.
Compounded in the big error is a confusion between reductionism and atomism. Atomism has been successful, in several stages, in physics up to the quarks, but it doesn't work any longer. Remember we still have no explanation of confinement (of quarks that is…), and this is because atomism fails at this scale. There have been the bootstrap theory where every particles is made of other particles, which in turn are made of other particules including the one it stated with.
@@bahadrartay4666 Reductionism is not a scientific method, it is metaphysics, an _a priori_ statement about reality, and reality itself is a philosophical concept. Science is about observations and how to manage them in the most economic way, it is certainly not a truth or something of the like. Atomism is an efficient way to manage observations, but it is no more than a method. It is a pity than people with shallow mind but with thick arrogance have fudged the two very different ideas, showing that they have understood none of them.
Hello, Thank you for the explanation of reductionism. Could you give an example of a theory that is emerging from another fundamental theory, yet the emerging theory is explaining behavior at smaller scales? I am trying to understand the point you make at time 3:40 in the video.
like wise i wonder why prof. Reiss would use cepheid stars in the large magellanic cloud to measure expansion of the universe ... isn't lmc gravitationally bound to the milkyway galaxy ? or gravitationally slung as it passes near ...being bound or slung should obscure accurate measure.... and wouldn't that measure of close objects be similar to measuring the growth of a babies fingernail in order to measure the overall growth of the entire baby ?
Very interesting, i would love to come back every 500 years, and see all the new ideas, and advancements in science, Technology, and medicine, providing that we do not destroy ourselves in the meantime, but as we only live in between the seconds, who knows.!!!
What category of analysis would one apply to the synchronized flight of a massive flock of birds? The behavior of each individual bird might be known as a function of what it senses from the other birds, but that does not explain any particular instance of the path of the entire flock. Or does it?
Interestingly, there was fairly recently an article on phys.org about a study that determined that flock behavior depends on individual birds reacting to the birds immediately next to them - there's no mechanism "higher" than that. Seems to be a reductionistic mechanism.
@@MichaelPiz , Could be, but does that explain the variation in the overall directions, the pick of a leader, etc? Is that really the way to understand the group behavior?
@@factChecker01 Not being anything like knowledgeable in that field, I'm not claiming anything one way or the other, just pointing out that the study relates closely to the topic and to your original comment.
@@factChecker01 It could explain the entire flock, though, if by following their immediate neighbors the bird "out front" changing direction causes all the others to change as they react to their immediate neighbors. I have observed on my own that a direction change does sort of "flow" through a flock. Not all the birds turn at the same instant.
@@MichaelPiz , It's a very interesting subject. The behavior of the "leader" might also be influenced by the behavior of the one beside him or behind him. The behavior of those neighbors might, in turn, be influenced by all their neighboring birds. So the behavior of an individual can only be known when a compatible behavior of the entire group is determined. This is a lot like the study of fluid flow. The solution to those problems is one that gives a completely compatible behavior of the entire group together.
What about thermodynamics?
There r at least 3 types of reductionism...1 methodological reductionism
2)theory reductionism
3) ontological reductionism mam...but in ur description u said only 2...is it?
Looking at „intentional“ systems like organisms or technical entities, reductionism seems to be not the only way to deal with those things. You can ask for the purpose of an organelle, an organ or a technical component. These questions have a defined borderline. You may ask for the purpose of certain bone or muscle in a given context of a body, but you cannot ask for the purpose of humans, without drifting into esoterism. But there is another way of looking at nature: Dividing into absolute and relative. Absoluteness decouples from certain constraints by the presence of a certain ubiquity. For instance: Having an ubiquitous amount of processor capacity, main memory, storage and network connectivity, make search engines become possible. Search engines again decouple the acquisition of information from spatial restrictions. Another way of using this Four-ressource ubiquity is to establish virtualization. Virtualized software can now roam freely among the hardware concretions. Peter Ward with his medea hypothesis contemplates the reversibility of absoluteness. Higher organisms will inevitably vanish, when the earth turns into an overheated baking oven with less oxygen and a big amount of hydrogen sulfide evaporating from purple seas. By the way, absoluteness explains compelling why sustainable industry is an oxymoron. Industrialization can be defined as „getting rid of sustainability by making vertically stored commodities ubiquitous“.
Nice video! One sentence make me think a lot: "The constituents of a system determine how the system work"- That is trivially true, but this doesn't mean that a system is always the sum of its part. Like you, I don't believe in "strong emergence" but there is one experiment that produce me some "troubles" because it bring my "belief" in reductionism at the very limit. I think about the Alain Aspect experiment (violation of Bell's inequalities). I don't even mean the mystery on non-locality, I just mean that the system cannot be divided in its components. It seems that this is an example of a system that is more that the sum of its part (and you cannot understand it by studying both particles separately). Of course you can compute the behavior of the system by using QM so the behavior of the system IS computable from a fundamental theory (because entanglement is part of the equation) but there is no way for someone who study only one of the two particle (without knowledge about QM) to create a fundamental theory in order to deduce the emergence property of the system (entanglement). Is this a kind of strong emergence? I would really appreciate to have your opinion about this.
So, perhaps a more fundamental theory that doesn't describe even smaller constituents is what underlies QM/GR (at least).
Reductionism IS a philosophy (as are determinism, materialism and many other philosophical thesis valuables for sciences).
The opposite of REDUCTIONISM is ORGANICISM, wich states that parts can be understood from a totality (like the the organs in the body, or a word within a context).
What is the "good strategy"? Oh boy!.... This problem has been treated for long (Aristotle vs. Democritus), and never done for good, because it can´t be.
Occidental academic philosophy used to split the "method" in two parts, and each science inherit one or both moments of it.
resolutio-compositio (scholasticism),
analysis-synthesis (german philosophy),
deconstruction-interpretation (postmodernism).
You, young physicists, just happen to live in the analitic end of the matter, and can´t scape
Chess is a good analogy here: How the pieces work and the general goals and special rules (promotion of pawns, etc.) are the "reductionist" portions, while the strategies and tactics to win in given combinations to reach the ultimate goal (checkmate your opponent) are "meta-rules" that require overall understanding of the entire board configuration at any moment. One can think of the reductionist rules are for "particles" and the meta-rules are for "waves" in regards to quantum mechanics, for example.
And the fun thing is that you can also look at it that the strategies "emerge" from the basic rules of the pieces and board.
Particles and waves are not quite accurate though. They are separate things. Particles are the actual object, waves are the probability distribution of some characteristic. So if anything, a waveform is a reduction from its particle.
@@obsidianjane2267 Patterns. Waves can have many more complex interactions over a wide range of distances, areas, and volumes that can affect a particle, which is only a really effective modifier very close to it. The wide-ranging interactions from wave effects cause much more of the complex effects over the entire universe, most especially electromagnetic wave interaction over a distance. Thus, waves can have much more "meta-rule"-type effects than particles (waves rule the board in many directions at once, while particles rule only nearby or very narrow-focused distant objects on the board).
@@nathanokun8801 Not really, a waveform is just the sum of all of the interactions of a particle at a given moment. Unless you are in Copenhagen. ;+)
@@obsidianjane2267 Yes, ALL the interactions with the entire system it is part of, creating "beat frequency" modulations with ALL other objects in the vicinity, which are sometimes rather far away, which is my point, since ALL of these effects contribute to the particle's motion and other changeable parameters continuously. Waves are by definition non-localizable beyond a very significant area, as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states, unlike point particles.
@@nathanokun8801 Wave equations are descriptors of a quantized particle. They are one and the same. If you freeze a particle wave in time (ie; you measure it) it collapses into a point. Because it was always a discrete particle.
Sabine, didn't you say that the Measurement Problem is incompatible reductionism?
Wait, you mentioned it! 😬
Dr. Hossenfelder, it would be very interesting if you had a conversation with Eric Wienstien about his ideas of theortical physics. It looks likes you have tweeted at each other before, I was curious if you were interested in doing a podcast conversation together.
Emergence and reductionism are great concepts that helped us explain macro properties like conductivity and temperature during the late 1800’s. But they are not the answer to everything. Humanity came at new crossroads around the early 1900’s, studying the subatomic realm. Here we encountered particle behavior (particle-wave duality, quanta, gravity, quantum entanglement) which we could not fundamentally explain with emergence or any other concept. We circumvented this from the 1920’s onwards by developing complex mathematics (Quantum Physics QP, General Relativity GR) that accurately DESCRIBE this behavior, leading to a jump in applied technology. But fundamentally physicists still do NOT understand what’s beneath all this math. Reluctant to admit failure, they collectively decided that the mathematics of QP and GR itself was ‘fundamental’ and next fudged their way forward with ever more exotic yet flawed theories for the past 100 years. It was a great period for employing hundreds of thousands of ‘scientists’ but that’s all we achieved.
Much as the community hates to admit it, the answer to what’s beneath all the math of GR and QP is actually a very simple yet profound one: At university we are taught that there is a ‘fixed’ or ‘synonymous’ relation between the 4 FUNCTIONS of our continuum (Grid, Clock, Potential, Inertia) and the 4 MEASURES (Space, Time, Energy, Mass). However in reality this relation is a DUAL one. When crossing into the subatomic realm, Energy and Space switch in their roles of grid and potential, as do Time and Mass in their role of clock and inertia. As such, we must view the subatomic realm as an ‘Energymass’ continuum where positions are expressed in Energy and where Mass has the function of clock. This is why events appear to happen ‘instantly’ time-wise (e.g. electron quantum leaps) and why we need to resort to probability calculations in quantum physics to yet ‘find’ a particle in spatial terms. It is also the reason why we prefer to use eV’s to describe the location of an electron. Both dual setups are orthogonal (which is why mathematical infinities occur in gauge invariances) and both are valid, yet one of them always dominates over the other. Nevertheless, if we want to fully understand physics, we must learn to think in terms of both orthogonal setups at the same time. We will next demonstrate how this explains all ‘mysterious’ QP behavior:
PARTICLE WAVE DUALITY/ THE DOUBLE SLIT EXPERIMENT. Particle wave duality is not related to the particle itself, but to the dual setup of our continuum. Best example is the double slit experiment: The spacetime (ST) trajectory of the particle passing a slit is not defined in the area behind and between the two slits. This is why we see the otherwise weak orthogonal ME continuum setup come to live precisely there, displaying its orthogonal ‘Energy as the grid’ property. Meaning: the energy of the particle becomes the grid itself, orthogonal to the ST trajectory, explaining its wave like patterns and interference lines we observe. That’s all there is to it.
QUANTUM LEAP OF ELECTRONS. Movement in our ST continuum is described as: ‘..it takes TIME to move an object from one SPATIAL location to another..’ When inverting functions and measures the very same movement description in the subatomic Energymass continuum becomes: ‘..it take MASS (relativistic mass of incoming photon) to move an object (electron) from one ENERGY location to another..’ Notice there is no time involved here. It takes mass, not time to do this.
E=MC2. In our ST continuum the movement equation is: Space (dist)= Time * Speed [m/s]. Switching measures we get the following equivalent speed formula for the Energymass continuum: Energy = Mass * Speed [J/kg = Nm/kg = m2/s2 = C2] so E=MC2. Thus Einstein’s formula of E=MC2 as actually the SPEED formula for the subatomic realm. In other words; any object with Energy in ST is also moving in its orthogonal terms over a distance E, over a period of M. This is why an object with energy has an extra virtual mass term in our experience. We now also see that Energy is fundamentally NOT ‘equivalent’ to Mass any more than Space is equivalent to Time in our continuum. This flawed interpretation may well be humanity’s biggest blunder. The speed formula of E=MC2 is secondary in our ST continuum, yet becomes the dominant speed formula when we force heavy particles to fuse or split form each other, in which case they shortly must cross subatomic distances. Now we understand why we see so much energy released during fusion of fission of nucleides !
GRAVITY. As explained before, gravity is purely the orthogonal speed effect. Any object moving in spacetime will have an orthogonal speed effect of -/- E/kg or -/-m2/s2. So translated back into ST terms this dual term means a compensating virtual accelerated contraction of the spacetime surface in front of it. This is 100% consistent with what Einstein described as ‘length contraction’ in his special relativity. Since also all tiny (subatomic) particles have speed, we get the additional cumulative ST contraction effect inside restmass that appears ‘radial’ , which is what Einstein next perfectly captured in his mathematics of GR concerning restmass.
QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT. Quantum entanglement is simply the EM continuum equivalent of what we call ‘locality’ in our ST continuum. To explain: In ST we speak of ‘locality’ when two objects have the same spatial values in all 3 grid directions at the same ‘time moment’. They can then influence each other regardless any difference in energy. If we translate the same sentence for locality towards the ME continuum we get: In the ME continuum we speak of locality when two objects have the same ENERGY (spin) values in all three directions at the same ‘mass moment’. They can then influence each other regardless any difference in space (distance).
It is time for scientists to embrace dual physics and make up for a lost century. Project humanity is not making progress right now…
David Deutsch gave the example of an atom of copper in the nose of a statue of Winston Churchill, and argued that no lower level theory could possibly explain why that atom happened to be in a square in London rather than in the ground.
With anything questionable; suddenly past familiar lyrics seem to always spring to mind. Then I am forced to choose between the reasoning of my heart, or the learned logic within my bewildering brain...
''Long Distance Run Around'' & ''Roundabout'' by YES
Long distance run around
Long time waiting to feel the sound
I still remember the dream there
I still remember the time you said goodbye
Did we really tell lies
Letting in the sunshine
Did we really count to one hundred
Cold summer listening
Hot colour melting the anger to stone
I still remember the dream there
I still remember the time you said goodbye
Did we really tell lies
Letting in the sunshine
Did we really count to one hundred
Looking for the sunshine
Along the drifting cloud the eagle searching down on the land
Catching the swirling wind the sailor sees the rim of the land
The eagle's dancing wings create as weather spins out of hand
Go closer hold the land feel partly no more than grains of sand
We stand to lose all time a thousand answers by in our hand
Next to your deeper fears we stand surrounded by million years
:Album ''Fragile'' (1971)
''Confusion's Focus often finds me captured between the microscope & the telescope; between the inner cages of the atom; between the expanded loneliness' of outer space.''-gilpin 4920
But as the recently late artist John Prine had said in his song ''Illegal Smile''...
But for-tun-ate-ly, Iv'e got the key, to escape, reality.
Happy Quarantined Days of Unleavened Bread 2020 -...tTt...
My favorit example of inappropriate reductionism is a big fat Low Pressure system traveling across the atlantic
I think there are examples of the opposite of methodological reductionism, like conclusions about the structure of genetic material being made by observing how hereditary traits work.
Perhaps the smallest scales in the universe are somehow balanced out by its largest ones; so that the deeper we probe into reality by discovering smaller and smaller stuff, more things emerge on the macroscopic level(s). It's like every attempt of analysis points in the direction of a new synthesis, and vice versa.
Excellent description of the problem of uncertainty, and precision in Identification of processes that form metastable resonance structures. Inherent circularity positioning, here-now forever Holographic Principle in CCC, cannot be made discrete certainty Theory (no absolutes) in the same way, which is why Science and Technology rely on continuous creation connection mathematical Disproof => Experimental re-construction, in Principle(?).
@ 0:46 A SYSTEM obviously is made out of it's constituents. But it's behaviour is for a large part determined by it's SURROUNDINGS. The probability that Sabine would be here, would be quite small if she had grown up in a less fortunous environment. Of course, she still would have had 2 eyes, 2 arms, 2 ears and 2 legs.
Worth also pointing out that “holism” is not the opposite of “reductionism”, whatever those who like to use the former term may think. You get this particularly with “alternative health” practitioners: they talk about “treating the person as a whole”, which is a pretty nonsensical concept when you realize that “non-alternative” medicine (i.e. “medicine that works”) includes epidemiology, which looks at how diseases spread between people, rather than just treating them in isolation. I don’t think the “alternative” crowd have come up with an “alternative epidemiology” yet; their concept of “holism” hasn’t progressed beyond looking at individuals in isolation.
That was really well explained. I will definitely keep that last point in mind for my next cocktail party 🙂.
Hey Sabine, has anyone described what the rear of a light beam would look like? If I turned on a beam of light, I can imagine it travelling at the speed of light as it speeds thru space. But, when I turn it off and I observe the beam from its source, what would I see?
I imagine that its relative speed would create a massive redshift due to the Doppler Effect, meaning that if you could actually observe its 'back', you could only detect it as long radio waves or something, and not as visible light.
@@tsopmocful1958 Yet, we measure (and see) light coming towards us (stars).
@@brozbro Yes, but now you're talking about large objects continuously emitting light, which is quite different.
Your original query was about a single beam of light.
@@tsopmocful1958
Anyway, you're making this literal when I'm trying to be theoretical. Einstein imagined riding on a light beam. Imagine standing behind a huge spotlight if that helps.
@@brozbro Yes, a spotlight is the kind of thing I was imagining, and what I thought you meant.
And I also know that this is just a thought experiment.
The trouble is of course, that I'm not a physicist, so I am probably completely wrong about my following guesses.
If we pointed a spotlight at the Moon and turned it on for let's say 10 seconds and then turned it off, the light beam would appear to just vanish straight away as usual when we turn off a light, because light moves so fast.
But I assume that if the spotlight is strong enough to be seen from the Moon (with a telescope or whatever), the distance means that it would appear and disappear a couple of seconds after it was turned on and turned off on Earth.
That must mean that within that couple of seconds, there must be a 10 second 'parcel' of photons travelling through space with a beginning and end, with less photons after some have been scattered or diffracted by the atmosphere or by things like dust in space.
Of course anyone in front of that parcel would only see the light when the parcel hits their eyes or instrument.
But what I assume you are asking is what we would see if we could look at the parcel from behind it as it moved through space.
Naturally though, it would move so fast and disappear into the distance so quickly that we would either have to keep pace with it somehow to observe its 'behind', or else have a very high speed recording device so we can look at a 'photo' of its 'behind' taken before it speeds away.
Now we know that stars or galaxies that are moving either towards or away from us have their emitted light waves compressed or stretched by the Doppler Effect, which causes 'blueshift' in those approaching and 'redshift' in those receding away, and due to the expanding universe, galaxies further away recede faster, which increases the redshift until they get quite dim as they approach the infrared spectrum.
So going by all that, I imagine that our single parcel of light would be moving away so fast (speed of light), its redshift would be so great that it would be way beyond the visible spectrum.
Even beyond the infrared and into radio waves.
So if it could be detected at all, I think that the 'back' of a light beam moving away from us could only be radio waves or frequencies even longer than that, and certainly not visible to our eyes.
Late to the party but it strikes me as enormously curious that reduction is a term wielded by both the arts and the sciences and yet the scientific understanding of it differs so strongly from how it is understood in the arts, to the extent that to be reductive is effectively and distinctively a slur over there, yet it's supposedly highly-valued over here. I'm getting the impression that you either weren't aware of this difference in understanding when you made this video or were implicitly dismissive of it, and I wonder what discussion might look like if we brought that to the fore. What are your thoughts on this? I'll be checking your later videos to see if you've said anything later on!
Very important words for this whole topic: supervene and isomorphic.
Does the behavior of the parts predict the behavior of the whole? Not always.
Sabine Hossenfelder is very talented and composes wonderful songs. But she is also a scientist who in 2008 laid the foundations for a cosmological model where the universe is made up of a mixture of positive and negative masses. It is then described not, like Albert Einstein's model which is summarized by a single field equation, but by a system of two coupled field equations.
From this angle Sabine is therefore the successor of Albert Einstein. But she could not build from her model elements that could be compared with the observations.
In France, we developed in 2014 a system also based on similar equations that we have exploited with great success by showing a dozen points where it matches observational data. Sabine accused us of plagiarizing her own model.
But these two systems are not identical. So we looked at how our model could be considered a special case of her model, which would not bother us at all. But we were unable to show it.
Sabine may hold the key to this case. Under these conditions she should, as we have asked her several times, publish an article showing this and we would be happy if this story could be cleared up in good faith because this accusation of plagiarism, formulated in the emails she sends to correspondents, puts us in a very unpleasant situation.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
So you and the scientific community can really explain every property in biology in physical terms? It's not just a story you guys tell each other? By 'really explain' I mean that you guys have already a system which explains each step from physics to biology? You can derive every biological property from the laws of physics? And how do you proof that? Can you refer to any books or papers in which such a derivation is worked out extensively?
If I understand correctly, these are a combination of "top down" and "down up" appoaches. Is this correct?
What would it look like if reductionism were to fail for something?
Perhaps if something had components, but their behavior was easier to understand by reducing it to the behavior of the thing of which they are components, rather than the behavior of the thing that they comprise being understandable in terms of the behavior of the components?
Though, I suppose there is then the question of what we mean by “component”?
Is it logically possible to describe a world in which things have components, but for which reductionism fails?
The Sabines were known for their resilience in battle and protective nature, and Sabine women were considered symbols of wisdom and honesty.
I think yiou can apply it to waves; and areas of space; could it be we dont see alien live because reductionism or vice versa is used to access a space time area specifically for travel; and the alien life we see if any is just todays first experiments..
When constraints prevent something from happening, that something can't be analyzed or reduced because it doesn't exist. When you break down an organism into its constituent parts, you are braking down the constraints that used to prevent something from happening - you don't even know what that was. You end up studying something totally different from what you started with because the broken down constraints could allow the interactions to happen, that weren't even the primary interactions that the system was trying to prevent in the first place before it was broken apart. Furthermore, everything in an organism has multiple functions. So, there is more than one way to break things down. Each way revealing something different. Yet even more, each "part" of the organism depends on the other parts to be maintained. As soon as you start breaking things down, the so called parts begin to degrade raising the question as to whether you are studying what you intended to study in the first place.
When people do take reductionism as a philosophy, they might well believe that the particles that make up matter are more "real" than the matter itself, and that the quantum field fluctuations that make up the "particles" are more "real" than the particles. The quantum field fluctuations are no more real than rocks or streams, or you or I. Reality consists of realms within realms, ad infinitum. None of these realms obstruct any other.
With the problem of measurement or entanglement, doesn't quantum physics have holistic, therefore anti-reductionist aspects? And if quantum physics is anti-reductionist, what about the rest of the sciences that would consider it as their physical basis?