Emergence, nonlinearity, and living systems: A metaphysical lecture from biology?

Abstract

It is widely believed among philosophers that a higher-level property, if it is a physical property, must be instantiated by a complex structure consisting of more basic physical properties. Dynamic properties of a higher than the most basic level are thus merely recombination of atomic properties. Consequently, no dynamics describing changes in the world, such as development, and/or interactions between physical, chemical, biological, or other systems, can possibly contradict this claim. Traditionally analogically emergent properties are understood to be novel "internal" properties of complex entities that cannot be reduced to lower-level properties. Taxonomies of emergence driven by reductionist motives regard such properties as mythical (e.g. vital force), acknowledging a possibility of only epistemic emergence in the world of physical properties. I propose in response that such a taxonomy may be incomplete. Biological systems as they are explained in terms of non-linear dynamics, I suggest, may fit requirements of non-epistemic emergence, exhibiting properties of relationally holistic systems. In a system explained in terms of nonlinear dynamics, none of the external properties influencing the system is singled out as the cause of its abrupt changes. Instead, a relation among the constituents of the system seems to be responsible for such a turn of events. I illustrate applications of nonlinear dynamics to the cases of metabolic control and biological pattern-formation. I outline relevant conceptual and empirical questions that should be addressed in order to answer whether the accounts concerning biological and possibly other types of natural systems which appeal to nonlinear dynamics, may be suggesting that behavior of these systems goes beyond epistemic emergence.