"Systems work one way at a particular scale but as we scale up we approach a boundary..." #readingToday

There's a interesting book by physicist Robert Laughlin called A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down. In it, he makes the case that different physical laws operate at different scales in nature and that when, for instance, we try to reconcile quantum theory with relativity we're trying to cross a boundary that is very much like a phase transition in matter. Systems work one way at a particular scale but as we scale up we approach a boundary where a different type of organization takes hold. Water turns to ice and it's chaotic at the boundary but once we cross over we're in a new state with different qualities. Nature isn't a continuum.