There's lots of cool things going on in the PEL Not School discussion groups. To entice those of you that are interested in emergence to come check things out, I've proposed reading and discussing a short, interesting essay by the physicist P. W. Anderson called “More is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Hierarchical Nature of Science”. The essay itself is was originally published in 1972 in Science and is a classic in the discussions of emergence. You can get a PDF copy of the original article or get it along with a bunch of other interesting articles included in recently published collection Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science (Bradford Books)
I plan to have a single discussion over Skype or somesuch concerning the reading at a time to be determined in mid/late December.
Come check it out!
-Dylan
are any of the pop books by Steven Johnson or others worth reading?
I found Johnson’s book worth reading. It focuses more on the large-system/social system/consciousness take on emergence rather than, say, spontaneous symmetry breaking, but it’s a nice, easy-to-read survey of it.
-Dylan
thanks I’ll take a look, I enjoyed his invention of air book, the philotv discussion of emergence is useful but probably not a good intro for a general audience.
I really need to get my act together and get my paypal account sorted for this not-shool thing. This topic is a really fascinating one.
Also, if by emergence we are talking about non-reductive physicalism (rather than the emergence of something we would want to call non-physical), there is a really good video discussion of the topic over at PhilosTV featuring Alex Rosenberg that people may be interested in.
I’m ready to join the group if you can create it, Dylan.