A Novel Approach to Emergence in Chemistry - Philosophy of Chemistry - page 39

Chapter 4
A Novel Approach to Emergence
in Chemistry

Alexandru Manafu

4.1 Introduction

As noted by Kim ( 2006 ), “emergence” is a philosophical term of art. There is no
unique or unified theory of emergence, and the meaning of the term varies from
author to author. Many scientists with a philosophical bent love the term, as do
some philosophers. But others complain that “emergence” is too vague and
unhelpful. Despite this, there is a common set of features that many concepts of
emergence share. Philosophers and scientists use the term “emergence” in relation
to levels of reality. The picture often invoked is that of a layer cake: physics at the
bottom, followed by chemistry, biology, psychology, etc., where each level is seen
as harbouring novel entities, 1 properties, phenomena, which emerge from the
interactions at the lower level. 2 This picture may be problematic, but if one accepts
it, emergence is seen like a nice way to explain the relations between the levels.
When thinking about emergence in this way, two seemingly contradictory
features become apparent. On the one hand, the emergents (be they entities,
properties, phenomena, processes, laws, explanations, etc.) are seen as dependent
on the lower level; on the other hand, emergents are seen as being autonomous from
the lower level. These two features seem contradictory: how can one and the same
set of things, properties, etc. be at the same time dependent and autonomous from
another set of things, properties, etc.? I suspect

this is one of the reasons

1 Throughout this paper I am using the word “entity” to mean “concrete individual” or “object”.
2 The metaphor of the layer cake is due to Putnam and Oppenheim ( 1958 ), who adopted it to argue
for a certain kind of reductionism.