Overview

Over the last several decades, the theories of emergence and downward causation have become arguably the most popular conceptual tools in scientific and philosophical attempts to explain the nature and character of global organization observed in various biological phenomena, from individual cell organization to ecological systems. The theory of emergence acknowledges the reality of layered strata or levels of systems, which are consequences of the appearance of an interacting range of novel qualities. A closer analysis of emergentism, however, reveals a number of philosophical problems facing this theory. In Emergence, Mariusz Tabaczek offers a thorough analysis of these problems and a constructive proposal of a new metaphysical foundation for both the classic downward causation-based and the new dynamical depth accounts of emergence theory, developed by Terrence Deacon. Tabaczek suggests ways in which both theoretical models of emergentism can be grounded in the classical and the new (dispositionalist) versions of Aristotelianism. This book will have an eager audience in metaphysicians working both in the analytic and the Thomistic traditions, as well as philosophers of science and biology interested in emergence theory and causation.

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9780268104979

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Reviews

Mariusz Tabaczek brings together in a single, coherent narrative work that others have not integrated before--namely, both philosophical and scientific work on emergence causal powers, and the renaissance of Aristotelianism. Tabaczek offers new and powerful criticisms of emergentism from an ontological perspective. He provides a fair and judicious appraisal of recent work on causal powers and hylomorphism, from a Thomistic viewpoint. Such a critique is timely and important. The scholarship is excellent. --Robert Koons, University of Texas at Austin The book presents in a very detailed narrative the current status quaestionis of theories of powers metaphysics as well as emergence and downward causation, and is extremely valuable and informative, proposing a move forward in the contemporary metaphysical discussion. The scholarship is superb, and the arguments and ideas presented in it could lead to new developments in the future by many a scholar interested in an Aristotelian interpretation of powers ontology. --Ignacio Silva, Philosophy Institute, Austral University, Argentina

Author Information

Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P., is a friar preacher, professor of theology, and member of the Thomistic Institute at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He is the author of Divine Action and Emergence: An Alternative to Panentheism (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021).

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