[MD] British Emergentism

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Mark,

I doubt Pirsig has (other can correct me), but it was a Pirsig scholar
that previously put me onto this Alexander view of emergence through
levels of complexity - now well established as evolutionary theory.

Nothing new under the sun ... except for "emergent qualities" ... I
like that ;-)

Regards
Ian

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 7:40 AM, markhsmit <markhsmit at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I was caught up in the concept of emergence, so I turned to the
> Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu).
> I got stuck reading about British Emergentism.  This has probably
> already been discussed before in this forum because it appears to
> be similar to MoQ, in some ways.  Take the following two summary
> paragraphs (some parts removed):
>
> 1.4 Summary of British Emergentism
>
> Let us sum up our discussion of the British Emergentists. Common to all these theorists is a layered view of nature. The world is divided into discrete strata, with fundamental physics as the base level, followed by chemistry, biology, and psychology (and possibly sociology). To each level corresponds a special science, and the levels are arranged in terms of increasing organizational complexity of matter, the bottom level being the limiting case investigated by the fundamental science of physics.
>
> Crucial to an account of emergence, however, is a view concerning the relationship of such levels. On this score, we find that there are, in fact, two rather different pictures of emergence, one represented by Mill and Broad, and the other represented by Alexander. For Mill and Broad, emergence involves the appearance of primitive high-level causal interactions that are additional to those of the more fundamental levels. Alexander, by contrast, is committed only to the appearance of novel qualities and associated, high-level causal patterns which cannot be directly expressed in terms of the more fundamental entities and principles. But these patterns do not supplement, much less supersede, the fundamental interactions. Rather, they are macroscopic patterns running through those very microscopic interactions. Emergent qualities are something truly new under the sun, but the world's fundamental dynamics remain unchanged.
>
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/
>
> Does Pirsig discuss this philosophy?
>
> Mark
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