Assemblies as Essences: to Realist Ontology by Manuel DeLanda

Abstract

The reason of remorse and rehabilitation of emergentism fixed in the Western philosophy of science was the inability of explanation of the new scientific facts without the aid of ontology with the freedom transcendant beings. Such an ontology, which considers individual objects accessible to calculation and analysis as the only legitimate carrier of essence, is called realistic. One of its variants was proposed by Manuel DeLanda and was called “assemblage theory”. The concept of “assemblage” makes, according to DeLanda, the concept of essence redundant, because it fully performs its functions of preserving the identity of the object throughout its existential history.