International conference Announced: Meanings of Emergence. Philosophy, Science, and Technology
Organized by Alessandro Bertinetto and Erica Onnis
After about fifty years of disinterest and diffidence, the notion of emergence has now returned to interest philosophers and scientists. On the one hand, the natural sciences have come across phenomena that seem well describable by using this concept, on the other hand, the science of complexity seems to see the emergence of new patterns as the distinctive feature of complex systems.
This new paradigm, as opposed to the reductionist one, therefore seems promising to shed light on some forms of ontological dependence that are much studied by contemporary metaphysics. On the other hand, some phenomena studied by quantum physics and condensed matter physics indicate that reductionism is not a satisfactory answer in physics. Finally, the technological evolution of the last decades seems to suggest that progress also follows an unpredictable and indeterminable path.
In short, the concept of emergence seems to be the key to understand many complex phenomena that concern us.