Autor: Byrne, Patrick H.

Buch: Beitrag zur Konferenz: World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion 7: 1-2 (March 2003)

Titel: Ecology, Economy and Redemption as Dynamic: The Contributions of Jane Jacobs and Bernard Lonergan

Stichwort: Emergence (emergente Wahrscheinlichkeit) vs. Materialismus; Unbestimmtheit der Naturgesetze; "probabilities of emergence and probabilities of survival"

Kurzinhalt: What is impressive about Lonergan's account of emergence is how he can avoid materialism without needing to invoke any sort of vitalistic force or elán vital.

Textausschnitt: (2) Emergence

2a Emergence has always been a problem for hardcore materialism, which tends to regard underlying matter (elementary particles) as ultimately unchanging. Although the rearrangements of matter change, ultimately no real change occurs. (Fs) (notabene)
This materialist philosophy tends to fly in the face of common sense and religious belief as well. Interesting, Lonergan argues that it is only a philosophical position that is also incompatible with scientific study. Science, he argues, seeks to correctly understand how events are intelligibly connected within schemes of recurrence, and when new schemes begin to function, really new intelligibilities emerge. (Fs)

2b What is impressive about Lonergan's account of emergence is how he can avoid materialism without needing to invoke any sort of vitalistic force or elán vital. Instead, he draws attention to an obvious but commonly overlooked feature of laws of science: their conditionality (1992, 70). Laws of science are extremely general, but for that very reason they are also are extremely indeterminate. For example, Newton's three laws of motion and law of gravity are extremely general; they apply to any massive object. Yet from those laws alone it is impossible to derive any specific, concrete path of motion. A determinate path of motion be deduced only once specific conditions are stipulated. For example, if one stipulates or observes two bodies with very special combinations of mass, position and velocity, then a particular kind of elliptical path can be deduced; but for a different combination, the bodies will follow a specific hyperbolic path. As another example, the laws of chemistry allow that if octane is combined with oxygen, then carbon dioxide and water will be produced (2 C8H18 + 34 O2 -> 8 CO2 + 18 H2O). However, this chemical transformation will occur as complete oxidation, only under highly specific conditions of pressure, temperature, concentration, catalysis, etc. To put the matter bluntly: the laws of science in and of themselves determine nothing. It is only the laws plus specified conditions that determine concrete events (1992, 70-71). (Fs)

2c Lonergan used this feature, the conditionality of scientific laws, as the foundation of his account of emergence of schemes of recurrence. It is true that A is a condition for the occurrence of B in the scheme, "If A occurs, B will occur; if B occurs ..." That does not mean, however, that A is the one and only condition for the occurrence of B. In general, we might think of A as the last condition to fall into place so that B occurs. The only thing that singles A out for special consideration from all the other conditions requisite for B is that A just happens to be an event that sets off a self-conditioning scheme that eventually leads back to the recurrence of A. In other words, if all of the other appropriate conditions happen to be fulfilled, then the occurrence of A will result in the occurrence of B and "if B occurs, C will occur; if C occurs ... A will recur." (Fs) (notabene)

2d For Lonergan, then, there is such a thing as real emergence. Schemes of recurrence emerge. Schemes of recurrence are not merely spatial aggregations of material particles or random variations. They are really distinct, novel, intelligible functionings. Lonergan writes for example that a biological species "is an intelligible solution to a problem of living in a given environment," that "later species are solutions that ... rise upon previous solutions," and that "a solution is the sort of thing that human insight hits upon" (1992, 290). They emerge wholly in accordance with laws of science. No vitalistic force is needed to produce them or breathe life into them. Yet schemes emerge only when the appropriate prior conditions happen to be fulfilled. Lonergan goes on to explain how the assembly of appropriate prior conditions occurs randomly, and hence that there are "probabilities of emergence and probabilities of survival" that pertain to this field of environmental conditions. Indeed he argues that such probabilites undergo dramatic jumps, but that is tangential to the purposes of the present paper. (Fs)