Physics Fixes All the Facts

Complex systems seem to magically emerge from the interaction of their parts. A whirlpool emerges from water molecules. A living cell from organic molecules You emerge from the cells of your body. Emergence. Not since “chaos” has a concept from physics spread like wildfire to other disciplines: it can be found from chemistry to economics; from psychology to ecology. At its heart is the alluring idea that there is a holistic component to nature, an edge of mystery. That you can’t understand the parts without understanding the whole. That more is different.

“Physics Fixes All the Facts” starts by taking you on a guided tour through a fascinating world of complexity, exploring phenomena from the inside of an atomic nucleus to bacterial behaviour to the ability of your thoughts to affect the world. This reveals something surprising: the concept of emergence is not useful. It is either so weak that it applies to almost every system you might be interested in. Or so strong that it is like the belief there are pixies in your garden. Impossible to disprove, maybe, but, until convincing empirical evidence is forthcoming, not worth spending time on. Why, then, has emergence such wide appeal? Graham argues that it reflects our struggle to accept that we live in a disenchanted world, a world in which we have no special status. Emergence is not so much “more is different”. It is an assertion that “I am different”.

In the early 19th century, Pierre-Simon Laplace asked us to imagine a demon, a being with unlimited knowledge and unlimited understanding. Where we perceive the richness of the macroscopic world, a demon would only see fundamental particles interacting according to the laws of physics. Using a captivating multidisciplinary approach which weaves together physics, philosophy and the theory of computation, Graham describes a world in which the scientific perspective is the demon’s perspective. With this perspective, we can see the ideas of complexity or emergence are a result of our not being demons. They are projections of our limitations onto the universe, whether cognitive constraints, lack of knowledge or the restricted range of our senses. In this radically materialist framework, we ourselves are just another collection of fundamental particles. “Physics Fixes All the Facts” will make you rethink how the world works and re-evaluate your place in it. The book will appeal to academics in the many fields which use the concepts of complexity or emergence. But the target audience is much broader and includes anyone fascinated by the power of science to explain the world around us, from students looking to add context to their formal studies to those with a more general scientific interest who want to delve deeper into the subject.

“Do we need more than physics to understand the world?”  Liam Graham first asked himself this question as a teenager and it has been the driving force behind his career ever since. After a degree in Theoretical Physics at Cambridge and a master’s in Philosophy at Warwick, he eventually found economics to be an appealing middle ground and completed a PhD at Birkbeck College, London.  To pay the rent, he taught English, developed and sold trading software and was the numbers’ guru for a boutique finance house.

Liam’s 15 year academic career was mostly spent as an Associate Professor at University College London, working in one of Europe’s top Economics departments.  His research involved building mathematical models of an extremely complex system, the macroeconomy, and his work was published in all the top macroeconomics journals.  Whether working on philosophy or economics, he never stopped reading science and exchanging with scientists.  In 2018 he left UCL to concentrate on his original question and the wide-ranging, multidisciplinary and endlessly fascinating project it has become.  His first book, “Molecular Storms: the Physics of Stars, Cells and the Origin of Life” was published by Springer Nature in 2023.