A New Look at Emergence. Or When after Is Different

Guay, A. et Sartenaer, O. (2016). A New Look at Emergence. Or When after Is Different. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 6(2), 297-322.

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In this paper, we put forward a new account of emergence called “transformational emergence”. Such an account captures a variety of emergence that can be considered as being diachronic and weakly ontological. The fact that transformational emergence actually constitutes a genuine form of emergence is motivated. Besides, the account is free of traditional problems surrounding more usual, synchronic versions of emergence, and it can find a strong empirical support in a specific physical phenomenon, the fractional quantum Hall effect, which has long been touted as a paradigmatic case of emergence.

This content has been updated on 4 November 2019 at 13 h 33 min.