Sawyer's site (home): http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~ksawyer/index.html his page on emergence: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~ksawyer/emergence.htm
from Sawyer: <snip>
The British emergentists were a group of philosophers who elaborated a theory of
emergence in the 1920s, focusing primarily on biological evolution [see Ablowitz, 1939;
Blitz, 1992; McLaughlin, 1992]. By the late 1920s, emergence was a full-fledged intellectual
fad. British emergentists cite Mill as the source of the emergence concept. In his
LQgic [ 1843] Book III, Chapter 6, 'Of the composition of causes,' Mill elaborated the
implications of the science of chemistry, and proposed two types of causation: mechanical
causation, which was additive, and heteropathic causation, or emergent causation,
which was not additive and not mechanical (vol. 2, p. 427).
However, Mill did not use the term 'emergent'; this term was coined by his friend
and colleague, philosopher George Henry Lewes [ 1875]. Like Mill, Lewes distinguished
between mechanical and chemical effects, referring to them as resultants and emergents,
respectively. The classic example of emergence invoked by both Mill and Lewes was the
combination of hydrogen and oxygen, resulting in water. Water does not have any of the
properties of either hydrogen or oxygen; its properties are emergent effects of the combination:
Although each effect is the resultant of its components, the product of its factors, we cannot
always trace the steps of the process, so as to see in the product the mode of operation of each factor. In
this latter case, I propose to call the effect an emergent. It arises out of the combined agencies, but in a
form which does not display the agents in action. [1875, vo1. 2, p. 412]
If all effects were resultants, Lewes noted, the power of scientific rationality would
be absolute, and mathematics could explain all phenomena. But Lewes claimed that
'effects are mostly emergents' [p. 414]. Thus, science must proceed by experiment and
observation, rather than rational reasoning, since emergent effects are unpredictable
before the event.
Mill's distinction between mechanical and heteropathic causation and Lewes's
concept of the emergent were elaborated by several English-language philosophers during
World War I, including C. Lloyd Morgan [1923], Samuel Alexander [1920], and
Edward Spaulding [ 1918]. Morgan, who was responsible for reintroducing Lewes's term
'emergence', claimed that in emergent evolution, 'one cannot predict ...the emergent
expression of some new kind of relatedness among pre-existent events' [1923, p. 6].
Although emergent phenomena follow the laws of nature, they will not always submit to
scientific study; 'such novelty is for us unpredictable owing to our partial knowledge of
the plan of emergence up to date, and our necessary ignorance of what the further development
of that plan will be' [p. 282].
<snip>
At 08:32 PM 2/24/2005 -0800, you wrote:
I will track down those references I promised and give all these posts the careful read they deserve. Great stuff! But I gotta devote some serious attention to an overdue project for the next week or something like that. I'll be back ...
~ Steve
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