George Ellis: Hawking's Co-Author on Why Reductionism Is Dead

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George Ellis is one of those guests who makes you rethink what you thought you understood. Co-author with Stephen Hawking of the singularity theorems, he's spent decades insisting on something most physicists won't touch: that reductionism is simply — patently — false. Physics doesn't decide outcomes. Context does. The thermostat sets the temperature. The algorithm tells the electrons what to do. The physics is the servant, not the master.

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TIMESTAMPS:

- 00:00:00 - Reductionism is Patently False

- 00:07:37 - Top-Down Causation Mechanics

- 00:13:46 - Modular Hierarchical Structures

- 00:21:00 - Causation at Emergent Levels

- 00:26:56 - Universal Biological Principles

- 00:36:07 - Critiquing Penrose and CCC

- 00:42:41 - The Physics of Infinity

- 00:48:50 - Agency and Physical Constraints

- 00:56:08 - The Open Future

- 01:07:23 - Bioelectricity and Goal-Directedness

- 01:12:28 - Evolving Block Universe

- 01:19:32 - Multiverse as Metaphysics

- 01:24:49 - Moral Realism as Data

LINKS MENTIONED:

- George's Papers: inspirehep.net/authors/1010821

- George's Books: amazon.com/stores/George-Francis-Rayner-Ellis/…

- Arrow of Time [Paper]: arxiv.org/abs/1302.7291

- Why Reductionism Does Not Work [Paper]: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-63…

- Recognizing Top-Down Causation [Paper]: arxiv.org/abs/1212.2275

- Top-Down Causation by Information Control [Paper]: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3226993

- Causal Closure of Physics [Paper]: arxiv.org/abs/2006.00972

- Issues in Philosophy of Cosmology [Paper]: arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0602280

- The Music of Life [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0199228361?tag=toe08-20

- How Can Physics Underlie the Mind? [Book]: amazon.com/dp/3662498073?tag=toe08-20

- Large Scale Structure of Space-Time [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0521099064?tag=toe08-20

- The Selfish Gene [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0199291152?tag=toe08-20

- World Beyond Physics [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0190871334?tag=toe08-20

- Contextual Wavefunction Collapse [Paper]: arxiv.org/abs/1807.08171

- A Theory of Biological Relativity [Paper]: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23386960

- Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness [Paper]: consc.net/papers/facing.pdf

- Quantum Physics, Digital Computers, and Life [Paper]: arxiv.org/abs/2403.06306

- Dynamical Emergence of Biology from Physics [Paper]: frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/1…

- The Whole Truth [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0691231354?tag=toe08-20

More links at curtjaimungal.substack.com

Guests do not pay to appear. #science

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