#renormalization group

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FQXi Essay Contest - Spring, 2017

Hossenfelder spells out the usual argument for reductionism, from effective field theory and causal exclusion, and points out a “loophole”: “we don’t know for sure the equations of effective field theories (RGEs) have solutions which can be analytically continued from high resolution to all lower resolutions“. Hence, from the point of view of philosophers arguing for the possibility of strong emergence, “the ball is back in the court of physicists“ to defend the claim that strong emergence is impossible.

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In this talk, Laura Ruetsche discusses the ideas in her paper "Renormalization Group Realism: The Ascent of Pessimism". That paper’s abstract appears below (Wikipedia links mine).

One realist response to the pessimistic meta-induction distinguishes idle theoretical wheels from aspects of successful theories we can expect to persist and espouses realism about the latter. Implementing the response requires a strategy for identifying the distinguished aspects. The strategy I will call renormalization group realism has the virtue of directly engaging the gears of our best current physics—perturbative quantum field theories. I argue that the strategy, rather than disarming the skeptical possibilities evinced by the pessimistic meta-induction, forces them to retreat a level. I also suggest that those skeptical possibilities continue to carry force.