Emergence, Reduction and Co-Operating Research Programmes

Abstract

In this chapter I resolve the first of the alleged contradistinctions between holism and reductionism in biology, to wit the one between the emergence thesis and the reduction thesis. I argue that the emergence thesis, when interpreted as an empirical claim about relations between properties of wholes and properties of their component parts, is a very plausible and universal thesis, which in no way, however, contradicts the reduction thesis. I do so by discussing properties of various kinds of wholes, which on the ground of this empirical thesis can be called emergent, but can nevertheless be explained in terms of some micro-theory about the component parts and suitable bridge principles in the form of aggregation and in particular correlation hypotheses. This implies that the emergence thesis, in its empirical form, can be considered a valid ontological thesis but that the irreducibility claim which is coupled to it by most holists, must be abandoned.