Abstract

This dissertation considers the history and philosophy of emergent evolution, and in particular the attempt to answer the question of the role of qualitative novelty in the evolutionary process. Chapter one examines the background to the theory of emergent evolution in the work of Charles Darwin. It is argued that Darwin's theory is neither tautologous nor revolutionary, and the application of Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolution to the case of Darwinian evolution is criticized. Chapter two analyzes the work of the comparative psychologist Conwy Lloyd Morgan, and his views on qualitative novelty are compared with those of other major contemporaneous emergentist theorists: Samuel Alexander, C. D. Broad and Roy Wood Sellars. Chapter three discusses the history of emergent evolution as a philosophical trend, up to and including the emergent materialism of Mario Bunge. An alternative emergentist view of the level structure of reality based on the four levels of matter, life, society and mind is proposed in the conclusion