Hello Russell, > "Sum of the parts" is more metaphoric than literal. IMHO, the key to > the kingdom is emergence, and nonlinearity is only necessary to
I used to throw around the word "emergence" around until I noticed that I used it there where I did not understand what was really going on, like in: "consciousness? - simple - an emergent process" Since then I have stopped using the word - it is, in fact, vacuous to call something emergent - whereas ie. nonlinear has definite meaning. The problem is that emergence seems to be the opposite of a mechanistic or an algorithmic process; or an analytical one. So it becomes a stop-gap concept for all processes which elude our common problem solution techniques. But no new explanation is obtained when one calls a process emergent - on gets instead a false sense of security, of having grasped something which in reality still eludes our understanding. Best Regards, Günther -- Günther Greindl Department of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/ Blog: http://dao.complexitystudies.org/ Site: http://www.complexitystudies.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
