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# More Is Different

## Details

**Authors** Anderson, Philip Warren

**Year** 1972

**Publisher** Science, 177(4047), 393–396

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Physics

**Secondary disciplines** Chemistry, Biology

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.177.4047.393) 
10.1126/science.177.4047.393

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To argue that accepting reductionism does not imply that complex systems can be reconstructed from fundamental laws.

### How they did it (methods)

Essay drawing on broken symmetry in ammonia, crystals, ferroelectrics and superconductors.

### What they found (results)

Anderson holds that large systems show new properties at each level of complexity, so that the whole becomes not only more than but very different from the sum of its parts. He argues that a system's state can have less symmetry than the laws that govern it, that some properties are meaningful only in the many-body limit, and that each level in the sequence from particle physics to the social sciences needs its own concepts. Moving from parts to wholes is largely one-way.

## Commentary

### In short

An essay arguing that knowing the fundamental laws of matter does not let one rebuild complex systems, because each level of organization brings new properties and concepts.

### Response

The essay centers on part-whole structure and levels, with wholes behaving unlike their parts, which is a core systems claim. It also turns on a distinction between reductionism, which Anderson accepts, and constructionism, which he rejects, and on symmetry of law versus symmetry of state. It is a conceptual argument, not a formal derivation, and the fit with the other patterns is not claimed. Findings were taken from a reprint text read through a summary, not the Science page.

**Patterns it shows** D, S

**Added** 2026-10-26

**How to cite this** Anderson, Philip Warren (1972). More Is Different. Science, 177(4047), 393–396.