Jadagul’s example seems to me to be a clear place where the term emergence is useful. Phil Goetz has given others in the past. OTOH, it still seems that in most of the cases where emergence is used as a synonym for “magic” much too often. ‘Emerges from’ seems to be less strong evidence for a legitimately useful term than than ‘emergent’, as ‘chaotic’ seems to be a perfect synonym for the latter.
Even in the case of ‘chaotic’, the tendency to use the term as a stop-sign is serious. A great deal of understanding of chaotic systems is possible (they are probably most of what we understand in the world, after all), just not precise long-term prediction of their configurations.
Vitalism seems to clearly constitute a “stop sign”, but I’d want much more expertise before confidently asserting that proto-chemists didn’t use Phlogiston to make novel predictions similar to those we would make with Oxygen. It seems to me like Phlogiston is a conflation of Oxygen and Energy similar to Newtonian “mass” as a conflation of gravitational and inertial mass, or pre-Newtonian “weight” as a conflation of weight and mass.
Jadagul’s example seems to me to be a clear place where the term emergence is useful. Phil Goetz has given others in the past. OTOH, it still seems that in most of the cases where emergence is used as a synonym for “magic” much too often. ‘Emerges from’ seems to be less strong evidence for a legitimately useful term than than ‘emergent’, as ‘chaotic’ seems to be a perfect synonym for the latter.
Even in the case of ‘chaotic’, the tendency to use the term as a stop-sign is serious. A great deal of understanding of chaotic systems is possible (they are probably most of what we understand in the world, after all), just not precise long-term prediction of their configurations.
Vitalism seems to clearly constitute a “stop sign”, but I’d want much more expertise before confidently asserting that proto-chemists didn’t use Phlogiston to make novel predictions similar to those we would make with Oxygen. It seems to me like Phlogiston is a conflation of Oxygen and Energy similar to Newtonian “mass” as a conflation of gravitational and inertial mass, or pre-Newtonian “weight” as a conflation of weight and mass.