{"id":238443,"date":"2026-06-05T23:10:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T04:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/the-delusion-of-a-particle-only-universe"},"modified":"2026-06-05T23:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T04:10:23","slug":"the-delusion-of-a-particle-only-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/the-delusion-of-a-particle-only-universe","title":{"rendered":"The delusion of a particle-only universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-delusion-of-a-particle-only-universe.webp\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>If everything that happens in the world ultimately comes down to the behavior of fundamental particles, it would seem that other entities, from cells to human beings, from currencies to financial markets, aren\u2019t really causing anything at all\u2014that they are just shadows cast by patterns at the most fundamental level. But philosopher <strong>David Yates<\/strong> argues this conclusion is wrong. The whole affects the parts, and higher-level structures don\u2019t just describe what is happening at lower levels in more convenient terms\u2014they actively shape what is possible. This means that chemists, biologists, psychologists, and economists aren\u2019t chasing shadows. They are studying structures that genuinely shape how the world unfolds.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In 1974, Jerry Fodor published a seminal paper titled \u2018Special Sciences\u2019, in which he argued for an intuitive and compelling picture of the relationship between fundamental physics and higher-level sciences such as biology, psychology and economics. Our world, according to Fodor, is arranged hierarchically, with fundamental physical particles at the bottom, combining to form molecules, which combine to form cells, which combine to form complex organisms, some of which have mental states, among them humans, who combine to form complex societies. The sciences are likewise arranged, with physics at the bottom, followed by chemistry, biology, physiology, neuroscience, psychology, sociology and economics. Now it is vanishingly unlikely, says Fodor, that things that share e.g. psychological or economic properties, also share some property specifiable in the language of physics or other lower-level sciences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If everything that happens in the world ultimately comes down to the behavior of fundamental particles, it would seem that other entities, from cells to human beings, from currencies to financial markets, aren\u2019t really causing anything at all\u2014that they are just shadows cast by patterns at the most fundamental level. But philosopher David Yates argues [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,45,47,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-chemistry","category-finance","category-neuroscience","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}