Citation: Anderson, Philip W. "More Is Different: Broken symmetry and the nature of the hierarchical structure of science." Science 177.4047 (1972): 393-396.
Web: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.177.4047.393
Tags: Philosophical, Foundational
In this classic article, Anderson discusses the extent to which quantitative differences ("more") can become qualitative differences ("is different"). In large part, the goal of the article seems to be a defense of non-fundamental fields. He argues that the work on fundamental laws is interesting, but there are equally deep discoveries to be made about the emergent phenomena of those laws in, for instance, quantum many-body physics. Similarly, the work work studying chemistry using the results from quantum many-body physics as interesting is equally deep, interesting, and important. All the way up, new fields really are different than the fields before them because the quantitative differences become qualitative.
Seeing as this article is written in a deeply readable way at a popular level, there is not much use in giving it a popular summary. I enjoyed reading it, and I recommend it to others as well.