The concept of emergence as a way of understandinghow new kinds of things come to be in the world, from cells to societies, grounded in but not ‘merely’ composed of material stuff, has a long and controversial history. For detractors it is handwaving at best, magical dualism at worst. For fans it holds out the possibility of accounting for the autonomous causal capacities of living things in a way still grounded in physical reality. Recently, new work based in the formal modeling of dynamic systems has created the possibility of fusing the philosophical and empirical approaches to form a new synthesis. 

This workshop brings together expertsonemergence with the aim of forming this synthesis. There will be two panelsdiscussing their respective positions following brief presentations of these.In the final session, discussants will be invited to ask questions, and the audience will have the opportunity to participate. 

In the gaps, Max Cooper (an audio-visual artist with a PhD in computational biology) will talk about and share some work from his Emergence project. 

2pm – Introductions 

Panel 1