The concept of emergence is receiving close attention and intense debates in contemporary philosophy and science.This paper explores the four main types of emergence based on the subject-matter and time dimensions.It ...The concept of emergence is receiving close attention and intense debates in contemporary philosophy and science.This paper explores the four main types of emergence based on the subject-matter and time dimensions.It argues that emergent phenomena are all dependent on the choice of space-time scale,and so the space-time scale selected is relative,the essence of emergence is the incompressibility of the process of evolution of system.By the epistemological or practical needs,we can construct different concepts or theories to explain the emergent properties,the micro-constitution,or the different evaluative states of a system,but the dependence of emergence on space-time scale and the middling evolution not only makes these concepts or theories irreducible,but causes the knowledge based on the original states of these emergent phenomena can’t predict their emergence in principle also.展开更多
文摘The concept of emergence is receiving close attention and intense debates in contemporary philosophy and science.This paper explores the four main types of emergence based on the subject-matter and time dimensions.It argues that emergent phenomena are all dependent on the choice of space-time scale,and so the space-time scale selected is relative,the essence of emergence is the incompressibility of the process of evolution of system.By the epistemological or practical needs,we can construct different concepts or theories to explain the emergent properties,the micro-constitution,or the different evaluative states of a system,but the dependence of emergence on space-time scale and the middling evolution not only makes these concepts or theories irreducible,but causes the knowledge based on the original states of these emergent phenomena can’t predict their emergence in principle also.
