IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/16937_23.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Emergence and radical novelty: from theory to methods

In: Handbook of Research Methods in Complexity Science

Author

Listed:
  • Professor Jeffrey A. Goldstein

Abstract

Understanding emergence along the lines of self-organization has become so ubiquitous the two terms have just about become synonymous. However, the usual connotations of self-organization result in a misleading account of emergence by downplaying the radical novelty characterizing emergent phenomena. It is this radical novelty which generates the necessary explanatory gap between the antecedent, lower level properties of emergent substrates and the consequent, higher level properties of emergent phenomena. Without this explanatory gap, emergent phenomena are not unpredictable, are not non-deducible, are not irreducible, and thus are not truly emergent. For emergent phenomena to be genuinely emergent, processes of emergence must accomplish the seemingly paradoxical feat of producing an explanatory gap while simultaneously maintaining some degree of continuity with the substrate level.

Suggested Citation

  • Professor Jeffrey A. Goldstein, 2018. "Emergence and radical novelty: from theory to methods," Chapters, in: Eve Mitleton-Kelly & Alexandros Paraskevas & Christopher Day (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods in Complexity Science, chapter 23, pages 507-524, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:16937_23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781785364419.00036.xml
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:16937_23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Darrel McCalla (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.e-elgar.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.