A Review of

In this book, Professor Robert Laughlin (2005) makes a strong case that all physical laws are emergent by drawing on numerous experimental facts in physics at the level of sub-atomic scale. He also coins the term The Emergent Age to indicate the crossroad at which the current scientific paradigm shift stands. The main theme of A Different Universe is to depict the end of reductionism that gives rise to positivism and replaces it with emergentism that characterizes the coming age of scientific revolution. If Professor Laughlin’s prophecy is correct, then the physical laws, including relativity theories, that physicists used to deem true are subject to severe intellectual challenges and are refutable. In contrast to reductionism which breaks systems into smaller parts and attempts to construct a theory of everything by understanding how these parts work, emergentism argues that nature can only be understood through principles of organization. That is, more is different. This connotes the meaning of complexity, but whereas complexity theory tries to emulate how natural phenomena work, emergentism looks for the underlying mechanisms under which these phenomena come about. The differenc