The theme of Robert Laughlin's A Different Universe is that we are moving into an age in which applying the principles of emergence are more likely to enhance our understanding of how things work than the staid practice of applying reductionist principles. But just what are the principles of emergence, anyway? They must be the ones found in the standard textbooks on emergence. I keep hoping to find something that qualifies as a standard textbook on emergence, and I hoped when I read about this book that it might provide some of the necessary framework that the future standard textbook will contain.

Laughlin knows emergence when he sees it. He recognizes it as a pervasive phenomenon that describes how the interactions between different systems results in relationships that have no meaning if considered in an environment with just one of the participating systems. He describes it as being the basis for new properties, which is a point that I think is lost on a lot of people. You don't get something for nothing, you get new properties for nothing.

On the other hand, Laughlin's book isn't the basis for some forthcoming standard textbook. While it has lots of interesting ideas and perspectives, Laughlin doesn't seem to have much patience for people that don't get what he already gets. His explanations are often quite abbreviated, and on occassion he alludes to things that certainly were lost on me. It's not that they were too complicated for me, I don't think. They just were too obscure. Here is an example. When explaining the basis for the proverbial Schroedinger's cat paradox, Laughlin starts by making clear that the idea of having a simultaneously alive and dead cat is ludicrous, and that Schroedinger intended it thus. He then states that it is a paradox only because something is missing from the argument. "The missing idea in the case of quantum measurement is emergence, specifically the principle of symmetry-breaking required for the apparatus to make sense." Instead of next making clear how emergence results in an apparent paradox, though, or what the principle of symmetry breaking is, he throws in several humorous analogies and then alludes to it being obvious that the problem is one of scale. The measurement apparatus must inherently be too large to detect a quantum property. This never really tied back to the assertion that the paradox could be readily understood by considering emergence.

My favorite chapter is the one on "baubles". I think nearly everyone can relate to the urge to collect interesting things. The degree to which this urge distracts us from focusing on meaningful things probably is not so obvious to most people.