There’s plenty of room in the middle: The unsung revolution of the renormalization group

The remarkable technical contributions of Michael E. Fisher to statistical physics and the development of the renormalization group are widely known and deeply influential. But less well known is his early and profound appreciation of the way in which renormalization group created a revolution in our understanding of how physics — in fact, all science — is practiced and the concomitant adjustment that needs to be made to our conception of the purpose and philosophy of science. In this chapter, I attempt to redress this imbalance, with examples from Fisher’s writings and my own work. It is my hope that this tribute will help remove some of the confusion that surrounds the scientific usage of minimal models and renormalization group concepts, as well as their limitations, in the ongoing effort to understand emergence in complex systems.