Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy

Preface; Introduction; Part I. Groundwork: 1. Scientific composition, the universe and everything: or, reductionism and emergentism in the sciences and philosophy; 2. A beginning framework for scientific composition; Part II. The Roots of Reduction: 3. How to be a scientific reductionist: defending 'nothing but' claims and an ultimate scientific image; 4. Understanding scientific reductionism: fundamentalist views of ontology, laws, theories, and methodology; Part III. The Fruits of Emergence: 5. The varieties of emergence: their natures, purposes and obligations; 6. A whole lot more from 'nothing but': conditioned aggregation, machresis and the possibility of strong emergence; 7. Understanding scientific emergentism: a mutualist nature and its interdependent levels, laws and sciences; Part IV. New Landscapes, New Horizons: 8. Our competing visions of nature and the sciences: illuminating the deeper debates and viable positions; 9. Making the issues concrete: the scientific hypotheses and their empirical differences; 10. The age of reduction versus the age of emergence: what has been successfully shown from the sciences (so far); Glossary; Bibliography; Index.