The truth physics can no longer ignore
21 hours ago
- #physics
- #complexity-science
- #life-science
- The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for AI research, challenging traditional physics domains like black holes and cosmology.
- Physics traditionally ignored living systems, treating them as molecular machines, but now recognizes life as a complex, self-organizing system.
- Reductionism, the idea that all science reduces to fundamental particles, has slowed in progress, leading to the rise of complexity science.
- Complexity science studies systems where the whole is more than the sum of its parts, exemplified by Philip W. Anderson's 'More is different'.
- Living systems defy reductionist physics by being dynamic, self-organized patterns that maintain themselves, unlike inert objects like rocks.
- Life's emergent properties, like evolution and unpredictability, challenge the old physics dream of predicting everything from fundamental particles.
- Life uniquely uses information for its own purposes, exhibiting agency and autonomy absent in non-living systems.
- Physicists must move beyond reductionism to understand life, leveraging their skills in modeling and mathematics to study self-organization and autonomy.
- Understanding life's fundamental differences may help detect biosignatures on distant planets and advance AI research by revealing its limits in silicon.
- The study of life offers physics new scientific marvels and a collaborative future with biologists, ecologists, and other disciplines.