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Cited by 255

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 18 of the 18 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence

Wimsatt, William C.·1997·Philosophy of Science
DOI 10.1086/392615
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Abstract

Most philosophical accounts of emergence are incompatible with reduction. Most scientists regard a system property as emergent relative to properties of the system's parts if it depends upon their mode of organization—a view consistent with reduction. Emergence can be analyzed as a failure of aggregativity—a state in which “the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts.” Aggregativity requires four conditions, giving tools for analyzing modes of organization. Differently met for different decompositions of the system, and in different degrees, these conditions provide powerful evaluation criteria for choosing decompositions, and heuristics for detecting biases of vulgar reductionisms. This analysis of emergence is compatible with reduction.

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Metadata

Authors
Wimsatt, W. C.
Venue
Philosophy of Science
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
1997
Volume
64
Issue
S4
Pages
S372-S384
ISSN
  • 0031-8248 (ISSN-L)
  • 1539-767X
DOI
10.1086/392615
OpenAlex
W2074562634
Cited by
255
References
18
FWCI
15.49
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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Wimsatt, W. C. (1997). Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence. Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/392615

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.