The Metaphysics of Emergence [Hardcover]

This book argues that a plausible account of emergence requires replacing the traditional assumption that what primarily exists are particular entities with generic processes. Traversing contemporary physics and issues of identity over time, it then proceeds to develop a metaphysical taxonomy of emergent entities and of the character of human life.PART I: PROCESSES AND ENTITIES 1.1 Change and Stability 1.2 The Need for a New Metaphysics 1.3 An Overview of the Project 1.4 A Terminological Difficulty PART II: THE METAPHYSICS OF PARTICULAR ENTITIES 2.1 The Reification of Being and the Unreality of Change 2.2 The Invention of the Timeless 2.3 Entity as the Primary Category 2.4 Entities as Countable Particulars 2.5 The Invention of Material 2.6 Explaining Change 2.7 The Disintegration of the Aristotelian Explanatory Model 2.8 Descartes' Metaphysical Dichotomy 2.9 Locke, Newton and the 'Corpuscular Philosophy' 2.10 The Rise of Physicalist Metaphysics PART III: CONCEPTUAL SHIFTS IN PHYSICS 3.1 The Invention of Physical Science 3.2 The Fate of 'Matter' 3.3 The Superseding of Newtonian Physics 3.4 Reconceptualizing 'Particles' 3.5 'Particles' and Quantum Fields 3.6 Conceptualizing Quantum Phenomena 3.7 Realist Interpretations of QFT 3.8 Metaphysical Implications PART IV: THE CATEGORY OF GENERIC PROCESSES 4.1 Processes, Stuffs, and Particulars 4.2 Generic and Specific Processes 4.3 Identifying Categories 4.4 The Logic of Process-descriptions 4.5 Processes, Entities, and their Parts 4.6 Re-categorizing Countables 4.7 The 'Part-of' Relation 4.8 Processes and Series of Events 4.9 Whitehead's Process Metaphysics PART V: IDENTITY THROUGH CHANGE 5.1 Identity and Discernible Difference 5.2 Identity as Continuity of Temporal Parts 5.3 Change in Four-dimensional Entities 5.4 Common Assumptions 5.5 Heraclitus' Insight 5.6 Change in Enduring Entities 5.7 Sameness across Different Times 5.8 The Types of Generic Process PART VI: A METAPHYSICAL TAXONOMY OF EMERGENT ENTITIES 6.1 Processes al#&