Emergence and Convergence : : Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge / / Mario Bunge.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Bunge, Mario,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Toronto Studies in Philosophy
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part I: Emergence -- 1. Part and Whole, Resultant and Emergent -- 2. System Emergence and Submergence -- 3. The Systemic Approach -- 4. Semiotic and Communication Systems -- 5. Society and Artefact -- 6. Individualism and Holism: Theoretical -- 7. Individualism and Holism: Practical -- 8. Three Views of Society -- Part II: Convergence -- 9. Reduction and Reductionism -- 10. A Pack of Failed Reductionist Projects -- 11. Why Integration Succeeds in Social Studies -- 12. Functional Convergence: The Case of Mental Functions -- 13. Stealthy Convergence: Rational-choice Theory and Hermeneutics -- 14. Convergence as Confusion: The Case of 'Maybe' -- 15. Emergence of Truth and Convergence to Truth -- 16. Emergence of Disease and Convergence of the Biomedical Sciences -- 17. The Emergence of Convergence and Divergence -- Glossary -- References -- Index of Names -- Index of Subjects