Crucial to accounts of complexity is the history of the concept of emergence. Pride of place is generally given to G. E. Lewes, who in 1879 offered a theory of “emergents,” of the unpredictable and incommensurate effects which follow from the crossing of causes. This essay recovers an earlier tradition; it focuses on experiments in seventeenth-century materials science, which explain emergent properties through an appeal to microstructural “texture.” A full appreciation of the modern turn to complexity, of our own ecological embeddeness and the interrelationship of things, requires therefore a return to the warp and weft of seventeenth-century artisanal practice.
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Daston, Lorraine;
(2010)
The Empire of Observation, 1600--1800
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Graßhoff, Gerd;
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Paolo Savoia;
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Knowing Nature by Its Surface: Butchers, Barbers, Surgeons, Gardeners, and Physicians in Early Modern Italy
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Demonstration by Simulation: The Philosophical Significance of Experiment in Helmholtz's Theory of Perception
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Mary Learner;
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Embroidering the New Science: Seventeenth-Century Florilegia and Botanical Study
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Cecon, Kleber;
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Chemical Translation: The Case of Robert Boyle's Experiments on Sensible Qualities
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Janiak, Andrew;
(2013)
Three Concepts of Causation in Newton
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Densmore, Dana;
(1999)
Cause and Hypothesis: Newton's Speculation about the Cause of Universal Gravitation
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Laura Stark;
(2019)
Emergence
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Thesis
Bray, Michael Edward, Jr.;
(2002)
The science and politics of the efficient cause in Hobbes and Spinoza
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Article
Hattab, Helen;
(2000)
The Problem of Secondary Causation in Descartes: A Response to Des Chene
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Article
Patrick J. Connolly;
(2021)
Causation and Gravitation in George Cheyne's Newtonian Natural Philosophy
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Thesis
Ducheyne, Steffen;
(2006)
Virtuosi at Work: Historical-Philosophical Essays on Causality and Methodology in the Natural Philosophy of Galileo, Huygens and Newton
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Schmaltz, Tad M.;
(2003)
Cartesian Causation: Body--Body Interaction, Motion, and Eternal Truths
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Smith, Pamela H.;
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Rey, Anne-Lise;
(2011)
Action, Perception, Organisation
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Sylvie Taussig;
(2016)
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Jamie C. Kassler;
(2019)
Newton’s Sensorium: Anatomy of a Concept
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Chapter
Gouk, Penelope;
(2012)
Clockwork or Musical Instrument? Some English Theories of Mind-Body Interaction Before and After Descartes
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