Posted by
Günther Greindl on
Jun 18, 2007; 9:56pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Seminal-Papers-in-Complexity-tp524047p524065.html
Hello Russell,
> "Sum of the parts" is more metaphoric than literal. IMHO, the key to
> the kingdom is emergence, and nonlinearity is only necessary to
I used to throw around the word "emergence" around until I noticed
that I used it there where I did not understand what was really going
on, like in: "consciousness? - simple - an emergent process"
Since then I have stopped using the word - it is, in fact, vacuous to
call something emergent - whereas ie. nonlinear has definite meaning.
The problem is that emergence seems to be the opposite of a
mechanistic or an algorithmic process; or an analytical one.
So it becomes a stop-gap concept for all processes which elude
our common problem solution techniques.
But no new explanation is obtained when one calls a process
emergent - on gets instead a false sense of security, of having
grasped something which in reality still eludes our understanding.
Best Regards,
G?nther
--
G?nther Greindl
Department of Philosophy of Science
University of Vienna
guenther.greindl at univie.ac.at
http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/Blog:
http://dao.complexitystudies.org/Site:
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