Emergence and Reduction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8091301 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shaun Le Boutillier (0000-0001-9618-1333, Principal Lecturer in Sociology Department of Humanities & Social Sciences Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 205-225 |
| Publication date | 2013-01-28 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/jtsb.12013 |
| OpenAlex | W1585667423 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 25 |
The question of the ontological status of social wholes has been formative to the development of key positions and debates within modern social theory. Intrinsic to this is the contested meaning of the concept of emergence and the idea that the collective whole is in some way more than the sum of its parts. This claim, in its contemporary form, gives exaggerated importance to a simple truism of re‐description that concerns all wholes. In this paper I argue that a better way to test the ontological status of wholes is to ask whether their causal properties can be reduced to the qualities of their parts. If reduction is possible the ontological status of emergent wholes is diminished. A close analysis of William Wimsatt's definition, conceptualisation, and characterisation of emergent phenomena provides an understanding of the relationship between wholes and their parts and suggests, also, that the properties of collective phenomena of a social kind reduce to the activities of people. Social wholes and their parts reside in the same mode (or level) of organisation. This paper concludes by employing Jaegwon Kim's method of ‘functional reduction’ to demonstrate how to reduce the qualities of wholes to those of their parts
Epistemology · Formative assessment · Meaning (existential · Simple (philosophy · Sociology · Critical Realism in Sociology · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Management and Organizational Studies · Philosophy
Finding philosophy in social science
Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings
The Structure of Science
Making Sense of Emergence
Materialism and Qualia
Realist Social Theory
The Causal Power of Social Structures
Realism and Social Science
The Possibility of Naturalism
For Structure
Reductionism and its heuristics
Social Objects, Causality and Contingent Realism
The Impossibility of Naturalism
For Emergence
Conflicting Varieties of Realism
Emergence and the Realist Account of Cause
Bhaskar and Bunge on Social Emergence
Why I am not an Individualist
The Rediscovery of the Mind
Method in Social Science
A Realist Theory of Science
Morphogenesis versus Structuration
Against Structure
Social Integration and System Integration
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |