Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science

by Paul Humphreys (Editor)

Emergence, largely ignored just thirty years ago, has become one of theliveliest areas of research in both philosophy and science. Fueled in part byadvances in complexity theory, artificial life, physics, psychology, sociology, andbiology and by the parallel development of new conceptual tools in philosophy, theidea of emergence offers a way to understand a wide variety of complex phenomena inways that are intriguingly different from more traditional approaches. This readercollects for the first time in one easily accessible place classic writings onemergence from contemporary philosophy and science. The chapters, by such prominentscholars as John Searle, Stephen Weinberg, William Wimsatt, Thomas Schelling, Jaegwon Kim, Robert Laughlin, Daniel Dennett, Herbert Simon, Stephen Wolfram, JerryFodor, Philip Anderson, and David Chalmers, cover the major approaches to emergence.Each of the three sections ("Philosophical Perspectives," "ScientificPerspectives," and "Background and Polemics") begins with anintroduction putting the chapters into context and posing key questions for furtherexploration. A bibliography lists more specialized material, and an associated Website (http: //mitpress.mit.edu/emergence) links to downloadable software and to othersites and publications about emergence.

MarkA. Bedau is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College, AdjunctProfessor of Systems Science at Portland State University, and Cofounder of theEuropean Center for Living Technology. He is editor-in-chief of the MIT Pressjournal Artificial Life. Paul Humphreys is Professor of Philosophy at the Universityof Virginia.

Contributors P. W. Anderson, Andrew Assad, Nils A. Baas, Mark A. Bedau, Mathieu S. Capcarr?re, David Chalmers, James P. Crutchfield, Daniel C. Dennett, J. Doyne Farmer, Jerry Fodor, Carl Hempel, Paul Humphreys, Jaegwon Kim, Robert B. Laughlin, Bernd Mayer, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernest Nagel, Martin Nillson, Michael W. Olesen, Paul Oppenheim, Norman H. Packard, David Pines, Steen Rasmussen, Edmund M. A. Ronald, Thomas Schelling, John Searle, Robert S. Shaw, Herbert Simon, Moshe Sipper, Stephen Weinberg, William Wimsatt, Stephen Wolfram

Genres: Philosophy, Physics, Biology, Science, Nonfiction

464 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[Ogi Ogas · Rating 3 out of 5]

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

[Alexander O. Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I nice summary of perspectives on constructions/formalizations/musings/applications of emergence as the developed at the cusp of the 21st century. Although this is mostly developed around frameworks of philosophy of mind and aspects of biology and physics, it still is of interest in areas of information and social science given a little imagination and mathematical knowledge.

[John C. Duff · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collaboration of scientific and philosophical arguments surrounding emergence.