Here are 100 books that The Re-Emergence of Emergence fans have personally recommended if you like
The Re-Emergence of Emergence.
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I’ve always had equally balanced interests in the arts/humanities and the natural sciences. I started as a physics major in college but added a second major in philosophy after encountering the evolutionary theories of Hegel, Bergson, Alexander, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin. This interest continued in graduate school at Northwestern, where my first year coincided with the arrival of Prof. Errol E. Harris, who had a similar focus and would direct my doctoral dissertation in philosophy, whose title was From Ontology to Praxis: A Metaphilosophical Inquiry into Two Philosophical Paradigms. One of the “paradigms” was reductionist; the other was emergentist.
David Blitz offers both a comprehensive selection of broadly diverse themes investigated by various theorists and the specific elements of the diverse theories these authors espouse.
This is a perfect “first book” in an emergence-theory reading list because it provides an encyclopedic account of both the variety of issues that have arisen in this area, as well a variety of responses...by such theorists as Lloyd Morgan, Samuel Alexander, Henri Bergson, C. D. Broad, R. W. Sellars, J. C. Smuts, Donald T. Campbell, Roger Sperry, Mario Bunge, and others (numbering close to a hundred individuals in all).
This variety allowed me to develop a broad view of this entire problem area and identify those issues that were most relevant to my interests.
Emergent evolution combines three separate but related claims, whose background, origin, and development I trace in this work: firstly, that evolution is a universal process of change, one which is productive of qualitative novelties; secondly, that qualitative novelty is the emergence in a system of a property not possessed by any of its parts; and thirdly, that reality can be analyzed into levels, each consisting of systems characterized by significant emergent properties. In part one I consider the background to emergence in the 19th century discussion of the philosophy of evolution among its leading exponents in England - Charles Darwin,…
I’ve always had equally balanced interests in the arts/humanities and the natural sciences. I started as a physics major in college but added a second major in philosophy after encountering the evolutionary theories of Hegel, Bergson, Alexander, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin. This interest continued in graduate school at Northwestern, where my first year coincided with the arrival of Prof. Errol E. Harris, who had a similar focus and would direct my doctoral dissertation in philosophy, whose title was From Ontology to Praxis: A Metaphilosophical Inquiry into Two Philosophical Paradigms. One of the “paradigms” was reductionist; the other was emergentist.
This selection of essays focuses on the important concept of “downward causation” (a designation first employed by Donald T. Campbell), that is, the idea that, in addition to the “upward” causal influence of parts on wholes, which is the focus of stereotypical (bottom-up) reductionist views, wholes also exercise top-down emergent causal influences on their parts.
This has been a vital recurring issue and an identifying principle in most theories of emergence. Campbell and Mark H. Bickhard provide the culminating chapter in this book.
I’ve always had equally balanced interests in the arts/humanities and the natural sciences. I started as a physics major in college but added a second major in philosophy after encountering the evolutionary theories of Hegel, Bergson, Alexander, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin. This interest continued in graduate school at Northwestern, where my first year coincided with the arrival of Prof. Errol E. Harris, who had a similar focus and would direct my doctoral dissertation in philosophy, whose title was From Ontology to Praxis: A Metaphilosophical Inquiry into Two Philosophical Paradigms. One of the “paradigms” was reductionist; the other was emergentist.
Mario Bunge’s study is notable for the variety of its analyses of various diverse phenomena in which emergence is evident: in general systems theory, for example, as well as in language systems, social analysis, theories of holism, social systems, biology, epistemology, and biomedical sciences.
Bunge singles out a sense of “convergence” that highlights the integration of multiple sub-processes. It’s not just the specific relation between distinct parts that is a hallmark of emergence, but the integrated relation among these sub-processes. This book certainly broadened my perspective of the whole subject area.
Two problems continually arise in the sciences and humanities, according to Mario Bunge: parts and wholes and the origin of novelty. In Emergence and Convergence, he works to address these problems, as well as that of systems and their emergent properties, as exemplified by the synthesis of molecules, the creation of ideas, and social inventions.
Along the way, Bunge examines further topical problems, such as the search for the mechanisms underlying observable facts, the limitations of both individualism and holism, the reach of reduction, the abuses of Darwinism, the rational choice-hermeneutics feud, the modularity of the brain vs. the unity…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I’ve always had equally balanced interests in the arts/humanities and the natural sciences. I started as a physics major in college but added a second major in philosophy after encountering the evolutionary theories of Hegel, Bergson, Alexander, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin. This interest continued in graduate school at Northwestern, where my first year coincided with the arrival of Prof. Errol E. Harris, who had a similar focus and would direct my doctoral dissertation in philosophy, whose title was From Ontology to Praxis: A Metaphilosophical Inquiry into Two Philosophical Paradigms. One of the “paradigms” was reductionist; the other was emergentist.
This is a collection of twenty-four essays by thirty-six prominent researchers, demonstrating how important this topic has become for both scientific and philosophical research. In 2016 (after I had published ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE: Toward a Metaphysics of Emergence [2012], where I discuss Paul Humphreys’ view on pp. 231-2), he published EMERGENCE: A Philosophical Account, Oxford University Press, New York.
What I find especially significant in this more recent (and more challenging) work is that, in effect, emergence theory has developed into both a metascience and a metaphilosophy–as is evident in Humphreys’ Chapters 2, “Ontological Emergence” and 5, “Conceptual Emergence,” as well as Chapters 6, “Philosophical Topics Related to Emergence,” and 7, “Scientific Topics Related to Emergence.” This parallels very closely my own perspective on both scientific and philosophical conceptions of emergence.
Contemporary classics on the the major approaches to emergence found in contemporary philosophy and science, with chapters by such prominent scholars as John Searle, Stephen Weinberg, William Wimsatt, Thomas Schelling, Jaegwon Kim, Daniel Dennett, Herbert Simon, Stephen Wolfram, Jerry Fodor, Philip Anderson, David Chalmers, and others.
Emergence, largely ignored just thirty years ago, has become one of the liveliest areas of research in both philosophy and science. Fueled by advances in complexity theory, artificial life, physics, psychology, sociology, and biology and by the parallel development of new conceptual tools in philosophy, the idea of emergence offers a way to understand…
I started practicing meditation while I was in high school and within 2 months of starting I had a metaphysical experience. That experience led me to become a scientist, I wanted to learn ways to study the spiritual using the methodologies of science. I've had a successful career with over 400 scientific publications and have had my work featured in the media and presented at hundreds of conferences and workshops around the world, including at the United Nations. Many scientists today are working to bridge the so-called gap between science and spirit and the positive effects they are having on increasing our understanding of what it is to be human.
Dr. Neil Theise is a physician scientist whose been on a spiritual journey since childhood. A constant part of his explorations has been to understand how complex systems behave that illuminate the very nature of life itself, from quantum foam to single-celled organisms, to human beings, to entire ecosystems, and beyond.
In this book, Neil elegantly illuminates in clear and accessible prose the many surprising underlying connections within a universe that is itself one vast complex system. He takes us to the frontiers of human knowledge, where science meets philosophy and beyond.
He restores wonder to our experience of the every day, allowing us to approach the world with greater understanding and a renewed sense of meaning.
An electrifying introduction to complexity theory, the science of how complex systems behave, that explains the interconnectedness of all things and that Deepak Chopra says, "will change the way you understand yourself and the universe."
Nothing in the universe is more complex than life. Throughout the skies, in oceans, and across lands, life is endlessly on the move. In its myriad forms-from cells to human beings, social structures, and ecosystems-life is open-ended, evolving, unpredictable, yet adaptive and self-sustaining. Complexity theory addresses the mysteries that animate science, philosophy, and metaphysics: how this teeming array of existence, from the infinitesimal to the…
Somehow, electrical impulses shoot through our brains to generate a surround sound, 3D-movie experience of the world. How on earth is this possible? When I was a college student, this question burrowed into my brain and wouldn’t get out. So I decided to make a living thinking about it. Now it’s 20 years later, I’m a philosophy professor at Yale-NUS College, and I still don’t know the answer!
Most things are ultimately explained by physics, but what if consciousness isn't? David Chalmers explores the idea that consciousness can't be explained in terms of bits of matter and energy scattered across spacetime; instead, consciousness is another basic part of the universe.
I’m impressed by how Chalmers’s arguments are extremely rigorous, but he also makes them accessible to ordinary people. It’s no surprise that this has become a classic of recent philosophy.
What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning?
David J. Chalmers unveils a major new theory of consciousness, one that rejects the prevailing reductionist trend of science, while offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain. Writing in a thought-provoking style, Chalmers proposes that conscious experience must be understood as an irreducible entity similar to such physical properties as time, mass, and space that exists at a fundamental level and cannot be understood as the…
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
I am a work in progress, on my way to becoming a conscious communicator and an even better human being. I believe that intentional communication and (the) quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives, careers, and societies. I’ve spent decades guiding people and cultures to foster open communication, cultivate self-understanding, and deepen trust, from large Fortune 500 to small businesses. Building communication skills is a practice that leads to self-transformation and finding meaning, and happiness. Each of these books will help you to better understand yourself and others, and learn to communicate at the level of trust.
By exploring the different levels of consciousness and how they manifest in our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, you will gain insights into your patterns of communication and how they impact the people around you.
It teaches you to be more mindful of your interactions with others, how to be more present and attentive in conversations, and to be able to see how you are perceived when communicating. And as you raise your level of consciousness, you will naturally become a more intentional, empathic, and compassionate communicator.
The Map of Consciousness Explained is an essential primer on the late Dr David R. Hawkins's teachings on human consciousness and their associated energy fields.
Using muscle testing, Dr Hawkins conducted more than 250,000 calibrations during 20 years of research to define a range of values, attitudes and emotions that correspond to levels of consciousness. This range of values - along with a logarithmic scale of 1 to 1,000 - became the Map of Consciousness, which Dr Hawkins first wrote about in his New York Times bestseller, Power vs. Force.
In this book, readers will gain an introduction and deeper…
I’m an educator at heart and have been teaching in high schools for over thirty years now. I get a kick out of helping young people see the world anew and think about ideas in ways that at first seem strange and challenging to them, both in the classroom and through my novels. Of course, to be any good at that, I have to be inquisitive and open myself, and there’s nothing like the topic of consciousness to make you feel feeble-minded and ill-informed. It’s such a wondrous topic because it sits at the precise meeting point of so many of our scientific, cultural, artistic, religious, and philosophical traditions.
I think glorious failures are far more interesting than modest successes, and let’s face it, any book that attempts to explain consciousness is bound to fail on so many levels. What I love about Hofstadter’s work is its boldness and reach. He’s as happy in the world of abstract metaphor as he is speaking of science or mathematics, and understands that we need new metaphors of consciousness just as badly as we need new scientific models. And even though he flounders at times, it kind of doesn’t matter, because of the sheer energy and verve of his quest: sort of Don Quixote with a calculator. For the math geeks amongst you, there’s an unusually clear and careful discussion of the incompleteness theorem as well. What’s not to like?
Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the strange loop",a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called I." The I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.…
Somehow, electrical impulses shoot through our brains to generate a surround sound, 3D-movie experience of the world. How on earth is this possible? When I was a college student, this question burrowed into my brain and wouldn’t get out. So I decided to make a living thinking about it. Now it’s 20 years later, I’m a philosophy professor at Yale-NUS College, and I still don’t know the answer!
What if consciousness isn't explained from the bottom up by little bits of matter that assemble into our brains? What if consciousness is instead explained from the top down by the universe as a whole?
That's the guiding idea of Philip Goff's book, which examines consciousness through the lens of an exciting recent idea: that reality itself is an integrated whole. What impresses me most about this book are Goff’s insights about the nature of consciousness and our introspective access to it.
A core philosophical project is the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of reality, the limited set of facts upon which all other facts depend. Perhaps the most popular theory of fundamental reality in contemporary analytic philosophy is physicalism, the view that the world is fundamentally physical in nature. The first half of this book argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience, and hence that physicalism cannot be true. Unusually for an opponent of physicalism, Goff argues that there are big problems with the most well-known arguments against physicalism-Chalmers' zombie conceivability argument and Jackson's…
I’ve always had equally balanced interests in the arts/humanities and the natural sciences. I like to think that I inherited much of this from my analytical “algebraic” mother, who was a nurse and tended to our family finances, and my holistic “geometrical” father, who was a carpenter. It’s probably no accident that my double major in college was in physics and philosophy...and, down the line, that I should develop a focused interest in human brain laterality, where the division between analysis and holism is so prominent.
This book, more than any other on the subject, surprised and fascinated me.
Its thesis is deceptively simple.
It suggests that the two hemispheres of the human brain were “strangers” to each other early in our evolutionary history (three millennia ago). The left hemisphere received the information from the right as a message from an unfamiliar source (an unseen “voice”).
Jaynes proposed that this was the basis for all religious experience. It was our intuitive right hemisphere that supplied the “voices” of the gods. True human consciousness only arose when this bicameral mind “broke down” and the “voice of God” was replaced with what had been speaking to us all along, the other more intuitive half of ourselves.
At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future.
