Jochen, Hope to pick this up in a week or two. Strongly recommend (broken record) Bedau and humphreys emergence. We should all read it and THEN talk about emergence. All the different points of view represented. Great resource.
Briefly, for me, the devil lies in making a comparison of the aggregation of parts with the whole. To make such a comparison, obviously, you cannot only study the parts as assembled into a whole, yet you have to study ALL the parts. So, the crucial difference seems to be between the parts arranged (in space and/or in time) in the manner in which the function as whole and the same parts arranged in some other way. this is how I come to (tentatively) define emergence as a property of a whole that is sensitive to the arrangement of its parts. It's an "explanatory" definition, which I have devoted my career to opposing, but I cannot do better. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([email protected]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > [Original Message] > From: Jochen Fromm <[email protected]> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> > Date: 7/19/2009 3:52:53 AM > Subject: [FRIAM] The whole minus the parts > > Already Aristotle knew emergence: > he said the whole is sometimes more > than the sum of its parts (*). Do we > get the essence of "emergence" if we > take the whole minus the parts? > > (*) He considered the question of unity > for aggregated things "which have > several parts and in which the > totality is not, as it were, a mere > heap, but the whole is something > besides the parts" (Aristotle > Metaphysics Book VIII, Chapter 6) > > -J. > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
