The Pillars of Emergentism. The Origin of the Theoretical Foundations of Emergentism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5944/endoxa.54.2024.30873Keywords:
Emergence, top-down causation, reductionismAbstract
Emergent properties are part of most current epistemic approaches. If we establish an axis between reductionistic physicalism and holistic organicism, we can find different variants of emergence depending on the interpretation of the characteristic elements of emergent properties. In all these interpretations, the four fundamental marks of emergent properties can be found more or less prominently: unpredictability, novelty, constraint and downward causation. This paper presents
a historical review of how these four pillars of emergence have been established as
the theoretical foundations of emergentism since the very origin of this current in
the 19th century.
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