Emergence

EXPLAINING EMERGENCE: TOWARDS AN ONTOLOGY OF LEVELS

CLAUS EMMECHE, SIMO K0PPE and FREDERIK STJERNFELT

The subject of this paper is the concept of emergence formulated as the idea that there are properties at a certain level of organization which can not be predicted from the properties found at lower levels.

As far as we can see, there is a hidden and mostly unnoticed historical value in this "coincidence": the concept of emergence is exactly that reasonable aspect of vitalism which is worth to maintain.

This is a very important difference between the vitalists and the emergentists: the vitalist's creative forces were relevant only in organic substances, not in inorganic matter. Emergence hence is creation of new properties regardless of the substance involved.

But these system builders' discussions are very important, and they are one of the main reasons that the concept of emergence was "devitalized", that is, deprived of an immaterial causal agent.

Emergence is among other things the concept which relate levels to each other - or to be more precise, the concept which denotes the very passage between them. It does not in itself solve anything, but it poses the problem in a general way, making it visible at the border of every specialized branch of science

In Lloyd Morgan's definition of emergence as "creation of new properties" there are three key words: "properties", "new" and "creation". By a more detailed discussion of these key concepts, it is possible to grasp the primary topics in the concept of emergence.

• properties

second, and more commonly used definition, tells us that emergence is at stake at the borders between the large sciences: where the explanatory power of one science must give in, another must take over at the level of the hitherto unexplainable - emergent - property. But it is not possible to restrict emergence to these borders. As already Morgan realized, the science usually considered more basic than all others - physics - in itself contains numerous cases of emergence.

• novelty
• creation