I think of these composite objects as emergent, in the sense that they emerge as solutions of equations involving only more fundamental objects. This emergence is subtle and easy to miss because historically, the scientific process has mostly gone in the opposite direction: for example, we humans knew of stars before realizing that they were made of atoms, we knew of atoms before realizing that they were made of electrons, protons and neutrons, and we knew of neutrons before we discovered quarks. For every emergent object that’s important to us humans, we create baggage in the form of new
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