Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge

Capa
University of Toronto Press, 1 de jan. de 2003 - 330 páginas

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 of the mind, the cluster of concepts around 'maybe,' the uselessness of many-worlds metaphysics and semantics, the hazards posed by Bayesianism, the nature of partial truth, the obstacles to correct medical diagnosis, and the formal conditions for the emergence of a cross-discipline.

Bunge is not interested in idle fantasies, but about many of the problems that occur in any discipline that studies reality or ways to control it. His work is about the merger of initially independent lines of inquiry, such as developmental evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, and socio-economics. Bunge proposes a clear definition of the concept of emergence to replace that of supervenience and clarifies the notions of system, real possibility, inverse problem, interdiscipline, and partial truth that occur in all fields.

 

Conteúdo

Introduction
3
Part and Whole Resultant and Emergent
9
System Emergence and Submergence
26
The Systemic Approach
40
Semiotic and Communication Systems
53
Society and Artefact
70
Theoretical
82
Practical
97
Diagnosis as an Inverse Problem
253
Knowledge of Mechanism Strengthens Inference
256
Bayesian Number Juggling
259
Decisiontheoretic Management of Therapy
261
Medicine between Basic Science and Technology
263
Concluding Remarks
265
The Emergence of Convergence and Divergence
268
Convergence
270

Three Views of Society
112
Reduction and Reductionism
129
A Pack of Failed Reductionist Projects
149
Evolutionary Psychology
156
Psychologism
162
Why Integration Succeeds in Social Studies
168
The Case of Mental Functions
179
Rationalchoice Theory
196
The Case of Maybe
213
Emergence of Truth and Convergence to Truth
237
Emergence of Disease and Convergence of the Biomedical
250
What Kind of Entity Is Disease?
252
Caution against Premature Unification
272
Why Both Processes Are Required
274
Logic and Semantics of Integration
277
Glue
278
Integrated Sciences and Technologies
280
Concluding Remarks
282
GLOSSARY
285
REFERENCES
293
INDEX OF NAMES
315
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
323
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Sobre o autor (2003)

Mario Bunge is the Frothington Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at McGill University.

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