Samuel Fletcher (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
The concept of emergence, as it is implemented in modern physics, is commonly invoked but rarely de fined; even when it is, it is typically only done so informally. Building on recent influential work by Butter field (2011a,b), I provide precise formal defi nitions of emergence concepts as they pertain to properties represented in models, applying them to some basic examples from spacetime and thermostatistical physics. The chief formal innovation I employ, similarity structure, consists in a structured set of similarity relations amongst those models under analysis--and their properties--and is a generalization of topological structure.
