Emergence in evolutionary theory

George Henry Lewes, the 19th-century English philosopher of science, distinguished between resultants and emergents. Resultants -- phenomena that are predictable from their constituent parts and emergents -- those that are not

(e.g., a physical mixture of sand and talcum powder as contrasted with a chemical compound such as salt, which looks nothing like sodium or chlorine).

The evolutionary account of life is a continuous history marked by stages at which fundamentally new forms have appeared:
(1) the origin of life;
(2) the origin of nucleus-bearing protozoa;
(3) the origin of sexually reproducing forms, with an individual destiny lacking in cells that reproduce by fission;
(4) the rise of sentient animals, with nervous systems and protobrains; and
(5) the appearance of cogitative animals, namely humans.

Each of these new modes of life, though grounded in the physicochemical and biochemical conditions of the previous and simpler stage, is intelligible only in terms of its own ordering principle. These are thus cases of emergence.

Early in the 20th century, the British zoologist C. Lloyd Morgan, one of the founders of animal psychology, emphasized the antipode of the principle: nothing should be called an emergent unless it can be shown not to be a resultant.

Like Lewes, he treated the distinction as inductive and empirical, not as metempirical or metaphysical--i.e., not beyond the observable realm.

Morgan condemned the 20th-century French intuitionist Henri Bergson's creative evolution as speculative, while proclaiming emergent evolution as a scientific theory.

Even so, the theory has not been accepted universally by biologists. With genetics illuminating the mechanism of heredity (and hence the very conditions of evolution) and biochemistry elucidating the workings of the cell nucleus, some biologists are confirmed in their belief that scientific treatment admits only of analysis into parts and not into new kinds of wholes. Thus, they tend to concentrate on the mechanisms of mutation and of natural selection, effective in microevolution--the change from variety to variety and species to species--and to extrapolate these findings to macroevolution, to the origin of the great groups of living things.

(see also from the creation myths the creation through emergence )

Nevertheless, the concept of emergence still figures in some
evolutionary thinking. In the 1920s and '30s, Samuel Alexander, a
British realist metaphysician, and Jan Smuts, the South African
statesman, espoused emergence theories; and later, others, such as
the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the French
zoologist Albert Vandel, emphasized the series of levels of
organization, moving toward higher forms of consciousness. The
philosophy of organism of Alfred North Whitehead, the leading
process metaphysician, with its doctrine of creative advance, is a
philosophy of emergence; so also is the theory of personal
knowledge of Michael Polanyi, a Hungarian scientist and philosopher,
with its levels of being and of knowing, none of which are wholly
intelligible to those they describe.
(suggestion: check some of the references, as e.g.Teilhard de Chardin,
in Enc. Britt. or other search machines, e.g. Google)

Our notes

• It has recently become very popular in many connections. See e.g. the link to Emergence, a management journal, below.
• Some links to the work of Claus Emmeche (Copenhagen University) on Emergence (local copies):
• Paper 1: EXPLAINING EMERGENCE - towards an ontology of levels
• Paper 2: On Emergence and Explanation

complexity

Emergence (see also Emergence in evolutionary theory )

The difference between complexity arising from emergence and that
coming only from connection patterns lies in the nature of the
interactions between the various components of the system. For
emergence, attention is not placed simply on whether there is some
kind of interaction between the components but also on the specific
nature of those interactions. For instance, connectivity alone would
not enable one to distinguish between ordinary tap water, which
involves an interaction between hydrogen and oxygen molecules, and
heavy water (deuterium), which involves an interaction between the
same components but with an extra neutron thrown into the mix.
Emergence would make this distinction. In practice it is often
difficult (and unnecessary) to differentiate between connectivity and
emergence, and they are frequently treated as synonymous
surprise-generating mechanisms.

Emergent behaviour

              b. April 18, 1817, London, Eng.
              d. Nov. 28, 1878, London

              English philosopher, literary critic, dramatist,
              actor, scientist, and editor, remembered chiefly
              for his decades-long liaison with the novelist
            Mary Ann Evans (better known by her
              pseudonym, George Eliot).

All of Lewes' major writings were stimulated by his association with
Evans, which included mutual consultation about articles and
attendance at plays and operas that Lewes reviewed for The
Leader. Before turning to scientific studies, he published Life and
Works of Goethe, 2 vol. (1855), which is still considered the best
introduction in English to the poet. Besides numerous papers on motor
and sensory nerves, he published Seaside Studies (1858),
Physiology of Common Life, 2 vol. (1859-60), and Studies in
Animal Life (1862). These were followed by a study of Aristotle
(1864) and his most ambitious work, Problems of Life and Mind, 5
vol. (1873-79). He edited The Fortnightly Review (1865-66),
contributing articles in science, politics, and literary criticism.

 b. Feb. 6, 1852, London
 d. March 6, 1936, Hastings, Sussex, Eng.

British zoologist and psychologist, sometimes called the founder of
comparative, or animal, psychology.

Educated at the School of Mines with the intention of earning a living
as a mining engineer, Morgan was diverted into biology by a chance
meeting with Thomas Huxley, who urged him to become one of his
students at the Royal College of Science. After a tour of North and
South America as a tutor, Morgan did study with Huxley. After then
teaching physical sciences at the Diocesan College at Rondebosch,
S.Af. (1878-84), Morgan accepted the chair of geology and zoology
at University College, Bristol, where he remained for the rest of his
professional career. He became principal of the college in 1887 and
vice chancellor of the university in 1910 but returned to teaching
(1911-19) as professor of psychology and ethics.

In his studies of animal psychology over the years, Morgan attempted
to describe animal behaviour in objective terms and without
anthropomorphisms. He studied animal behaviour for its own sake,
without regard to the mental evolution of man, and applied what has
come to be called the principle of parsimony: in Morgan's words (An
Introduction to Comparative Psychology, 1894), "In no case may
we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher
psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the
exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale." (See
comparative psychology.)

In later years, especially after retirement from Bristol, Morgan turned
more to metaphysical or philosophical questions, as reflected
especially in Emergent Evolution (1923) and Life, Mind and Spirit
(1926).

creation myth (Encyclopedia Brittanica)

Creation through emergence

Just as the supreme-creator-deity myth forms a homology to the sky,
the emergence myth forms a homology to the earth and to the
childbearing woman. In many cases the emergence of the created
order is analogous to the growth of a child in the womb and its
emission at birth. This symbolism is made clear in a Zuni myth that
states,
 

     Anon is the nethermost world, the seed of men and
     creatures took form and increased; even as in eggs in
     warm places speedily appear . . . Everywhere were
     unfinished creatures, crawling like reptiles one over
     another, one spitting on another or doing other
     indecencies . . . until many among them escaped,
     growing wiser and more manlike.
 

The underworlds prior to the created order appear chaotic; the beings
inhabiting these places seem without form or stability, or they commit
immoral acts. The seeming chaos is moving toward a definite form of
order, however, an order latent in the very forms themselves rather
than from an imposition of order from the outside. (See chaos and
order.)

From another perspective the emergence myth is homologous to the
seed. When the homologue of the seed is referred to, the meaning of
fertility and death are at once introduced. The seed must die before it
can be reborn and actualize its potentiality. This symbolism is
dramatically presented in a wide range of funerary rites: one is buried
in the earth in hope of a renewal from the earth, or the earth is the
repository of the ancestors from whom the new generation emerges.
In every case, emergence myths demonstrate the latent potency
immanent in the earth as a repository of all life forms.

In the study of complex systems, the idea of emergence is used to indicate the arising of patterns,
structures, or properties that do not seem adequately explained by referring only to the system's
pre-existing components and their interaction. Emergence becomes of increasing importance as an
explanatory construct when the system is characterized by the following features:

• when the organization of the system, i.e., its global order, appears to be more salient and of a different kind than the components alone;
• when the components can be replaced without an accompanying decommissioning of the whole  system;
• when the new global patterns or properties are radically novel  with respect to the pre-existing  components; thus, the emergent patterns seem to be unpredictable and nondeducible from the  components as well as irreducible to those components.