Critical Reaction to Emergent Evolution

Abstract

At its apogee, emergent evolution found its finest medium of expression in metaphysical systems such as those of Lloyd Morgan and Samuel Alexander. As a philosophical trend it was at its height during the period of the mid-1920s. A session devoted to it at the VIth World Congress of Philosophy, as well as a colloquium held at the Aristotelian Society were indicative of the interest for the new concept.¹ As the trend of emergent evolution developed, a number of criticisms were made. Stephen Pepper rejected emergentism as an incoherent concept, while Charles Baylis argued that emergence was so ubiquitous as to be trivial. William McDougall subjected emergent evolution to a general critique from the point of view of interactive dualism, while Bertrand Russell rejected it from the point of view of neutral monism. Finally, Rudolf Carnap in his defence of reductionism provided the alternative to emergence that became dominant during the period of the mid-1930s through to the early-1950s during what I term the “eclipse of emergentism.”