Heteropathy

Emergence is a buzzword in the study of complex systems. Its new life came into being as experimental scientists delved into self-assembled molecular systems. Parallel to these discoveries were advances in computational capabilities allowing for the simulation of non-linear dynamics at longer timescales. I guess I’m in the right era to be studying the origin-of-life and possibly make headway. That being said, emergence is an old idea, but only now coming into its own.

 

I’ve read many takes on the notion of emergence. My most recent foray is Terrence Deacon’s Incomplete Nature. It’s a thick book. The prose is dense although repetitive, making it tedious to read. It’s also ten years old – which is getting old when you’re at the cutting edge of experimental and computational science. I’m five chapters in. Chapter 5 is appropriately titled “Emergence” and ties together the (tiresome) threads together of the first part of his book. I’m glad I made it this far because I enjoyed the historical perspective that Deacon narrates. And I think I’ll keep going to see if there are any nuggets to glean. (I wasn’t so sure as I slogged through the first four chapters.)

 

Deacon thinks the two outstanding problems that defy the reductionism of established science are the origin of life and the nature of mind. His expertise in biological anthropology and neuroscience speaks to the latter. I’m interested in the former, but I agree with him that there are many parallels in the two cases. I personally think the origin-of-life problem might be the more tractable of the two, but it’s too early to tell.

 

The historical perspective that Deacon takes begins with the philosophers John Stuart Mill and George Henry Lewes. Mill makes reference to an example that my introductory general chemistry students encounter – the formation of table salt (useful and beneficial to us) from two seemingly dangerous substances, sodium metal and chlorine gas. The heart of chemistry is Atomic Theory, and students in my chemistry class (hopefully) learn to use the model of ‘invisible’ atoms as the constituents of matter to explain all manner of interesting macroscopic observations.

 

Mill thinks there’s something different about organisms that distinguishes them from mere machines. Quoting Mill: “To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients of a living body to be extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing up of the separate actions of those elements will ever amount to the living body itself.” The essential point Deacon makes is that there is a “discontinuity of properties despite compositional continuity” when one crosses ‘levels’. How those levels are divided from each other is still contentious, but this idea gibes with ‘biological relativity’ arguing that no explanatory level can be privileged over others.

 

Within a level, reductionism works, i.e., the whole is the sum of its parts. Mill calls these homopathic laws. Don’t confuse homopathy with homeopathy (as my Spellchecker keeps doing and there’s one typo in page 155 of Deacon’s book that demonstrates its insidiousness); the latter makes no sense chemically is all I will say about it in this post. But back to the topic at hand. When levels are crossed, heteropathic laws operate. What are these heteropathic laws? There’s the rub. We don’t quite know, but this is what we’re trying to discover. In a sense, we haven’t answered the age-old question of what an Element or a Substance is, even though both words show up on the first day of my general chemistry class. They’re slippery concepts going back to the ancient Greek philosophers.

 

Deacon introduces a triad of philosophers known as the “British emergentists” that build on the work of Mill and Lewes. One of the arguments made is the inability to predict properties at one level from laws or properties at a ‘lower’ level. (By ‘lower’, one means a smaller lengthscale.) This led to two camps: Folks that emphasize the ontological nature of emergence, and folks that emphasize the epistemological nature. Both concepts have their problems. Deacon also discusses ‘weak’ versus ‘strong’ emergentist views depending on how severe one thinks about the ontological discontinuity between levels. My chemistry students by the end of the semester would think this discontinuity odd. They’d argue that we just don’t know enough yet to be able to make predictions, but that ‘hidden variables’ will eventually come to light.

 

Quantum mechanics gets dragged into the picture by the American philosopher Paul Humphreys. The idea is that because of wave-particle duality and other seemingly strange interpretations of the quantum world, “the individuation of events and objects is ambiguous… to circumvent the problem of double-counting causal influences at two levels… by arguing that fusion results in a loss of some constituent properties. They literally cease to exist as parts are incorporated into a larger configuration.” I’m somewhat sympathetic to this muddy view – an oxygen atom in the oxygen molecule differs greatly from an oxygen atom in the water molecule from my perspective as a quantum chemist. This is akin to the Humpty Dumpty problem. If you take H.D. apart, you can’t quite put him back together again.

 

Throughout the first several chapters, Deacon hints at the role of constraints in the process of emergence. He also weaves in and out discussing its time-dependence. I suspect that these two pieces are vital in conceptualizing what emergence is. But just like those other big words (Energy, Mind, Life), I don’t think we will easily be able to define Emergence. Rather, we’ll try to get at it conceptually with myriad examples. Somehow we’ll have to figure out Heteropathy works. Is it Work? I’ll know what Deacon thinks when I get to Chapter 11. Hopefully it won’t be a bankrupt idea.