Provided/Sethna group
New theories emerge from more complicated microscopic theories; for example, the behavior of superconductors depends only on a few properties of the metals they are made of. The idea that only a few combinations of microscopic details combine into emergent properties is shared with "sloppy" models in other fields. Cornell physicists have figured out why science works. Or rather, they've posited a theory for why scientific theories work - a meta theory. Publishing online Nov. 1, a team led by physics professor James P. Sethna has developed a unified computational framework that exposes the hidden hierarchy of scientific theories by quantifying the degree to which predictions - for example, how a particular cellular mechanism might work under certain conditions, or how sound travels through space - depend on the detailed variables of a model. They find that in an impossibly complex system like a cell, only a few combinations of those variables end up predicting how a system will behave.
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