The emphasis is not on the unfolding of something already in being but on the outspringing of something that has hitherto not been in being. Morgan saw such properties as crucial to evolution in its most meaningful and creative sense, where (Morgan, 1927: 112): The hypothesis is that when certain items of “stuff,” say o p q, enter into some relational organization R in unity of “substance,” the whole R(o p q) has some “properties” which could not be deduced from prior knowledge of the properties of o, p, and q taken severally. In more detail, Morgan (1932: 253) explained: Following Mill and Lewes, Morgan (1927: 3-4) defined emergent properties as “unpredictable” and “non-additive” results of complex processes. Subsequently, the philosopher of biology Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1927, 1933) wrote extensively on the topic. The word “emergent” in this context was first suggested by the philosopher George Lewes (1875, Ch. 2) with his idea of “heteropathetic” causation. 2: 181) wrote of irreducible properties: “Society is no more decomposable into individuals than a geometrical surface is into lines, or a line into points.” The idea of emergence was also hinted at by John Stuart Mill (1843, Bk 3, Ch. The philosopher Auguste Comte (1853, Vol. Hegel in his Logic and subsequently taken up by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. It is redolent, for example, of the “law of the transformation of quantity into quality” laid down by G.W.F. However, the general idea behind these terms is older. The terms “emergence” and “emergent property” date from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. University of Hertfordshire, ENG Introduction The Concept of Emergence in Social Science:
0 kommentar(er)
