Emergence from Within and Without: Juaerro on Polanyi’s Account of the External Origins of Emergence

Tradition and Discovery 40 (3):23-35 (2013)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper assesses a recent criticism of Michael Polanyi’s account of the origin of complex entities by Alicia Juarrero. According to Juarrero, Polanyi took higher-level complex entities like machines and organisms to come into existence through the imposition of external, top-down forces. This paper argues that while Polanyi took the emergence of machines to come about in such a way, Polanyi’s reading of 19th and early 20th-Century experimental embryology indicates his position is more sophisticated. Polanyi appears to have thought a synthesis was possible between reductive-mechanical and holistic-vitalistic approaches in embryology and he appears to have relied on this synthesis in his account of the origin of complex organisms. While I argue that this synthesis is unclear, it suggests that Polanyi conceived of the emergence of organisms as the result of internal, complex, and non-deterministic processes.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 98,205

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Michael Polanyi and Charles Sanders Peirce.Phil Mullins - 2011 - Tradition and Discovery 38 (3):7-12.
Margitay on Emergence and Ontological Hierarchy.Kyle Takaki - 2012 - Tradition and Discovery 39 (2):35-41.
Emergence, Supervenience, and Personal Knowledge.Philip Clayton - 2002 - Tradition and Discovery 29 (3):8-19.
On Polanyi, Clayton, and Biology.Martinez Hewlett - 2002 - Tradition and Discovery 29 (3):20-22.
Who Was Michael Polanyi?David W. Rutledge - 2015 - Tradition and Discovery 42 (1):10-17.
Torrance on Polanyi and Polanyi on God.John V. Apczynski - 1997 - Tradition and Discovery 24 (1):32-34.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-01-22

Downloads
50 (#349,471)

6 months
3 (#1,431,119)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

David W. Agler
Pennsylvania State University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references