ABSTRACT
The renormalization group should probably be called the renormalization semigroup, but sometimes, contradictory terminology sticks. The renormalization group procedure provides important insights because it shows quantitatively how fine-scale structure is progressively ignored and the physics of critical phenomena depend on these larger-scale, what students might call “structural”, features of the theory. The renormalization group breaks big problems down into small ones. Broken symmetry can be seen as a well-studied paradigm of emergent behaviour in the physical world. By breaking symmetry, these phases forfeit the status of being a “stationary state” of the sort beloved of elementary quantum mechanics treatments. Phase transitions are sharp and there is a clear delineation between the ordered and disordered states. The set of symmetry-breaking phase transitions includes as members those between the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic states and those between the superconducting and normal metal states of certain materials.
