Emergent evolution

Emergent evolution is the hypothesis that, in the course of evolution, some entirely new properties, such as mind and consciousness, appear at certain critical points, usually because of an unpredictable rearrangement of the already existing entities. The term was originated by the psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936).

In the 20th century, the hypothesis was widely criticized for providing no mechanism to how entirely new properties emerge, and for its historical roots in teleology.

The term emergent was first used to describe the concept by George Lewes in volume two of his 1875 book Problems of Life and Mind (p. 412). Henri Bergson covered similar themes in the popular book Creative Evolution in 1907. Emergence was further developed by Samuel Alexander in his Gifford Lectures at Glasgow during 1916–18 and published as Space, Time, and Deity (1920). The related term emergent evolution was coined by C. Lloyd Morgan in his own Gifford lectures of 1921–22 at St. Andrews and published as Emergent Evolution (1923). In an appendix to a lecture in his book, Morgan acknowledged the contributions of Roy Wood Sellars's Evolutionary Naturalism (1922).

Charles Darwin and Wallace's presentation of natural selection, coupled to the idea of evolution in Western thought, had gained acceptance due to the wealth of observational data provided and the seeming replacement of divine law with natural law in the affairs of men.

However, the mechanism of natural selection presumed the creation of variety by nature, only explaining how organisms adapted to this variety, not how the variety itself was created; even Darwin himself was aware of the distinction.

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