Evolution and Emergence: Systems, Organizations, Persons

Religious Studies Review Volume 35, Issue 3, Pages 153-153

By Amos Yong | Religious Studies Review

"This volume extends the conversation opened up by the series of volumes produced by the jointly sponsored Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (Berkeley, CA) ventures and by a number of previous publications on the topic of emergence by Oxford University Press. Between the introduction and postscript penned by the editors are fourteen essays/chapters almost equally spread out in the three sections on the philosophy, science (particularly at the levels of physics, biology, the cognitive neurosciences, and psychology), and theology of emergence at the various levels announced in the book's subtitle. Almost every essay lays out the conceptual or empirical terrain and explores various aspects of the notion of emergence before making constructive proposals. Perhaps a central thread throughout the book is the discussion and critical analysis of reductionism in its many guises, although there are also contributors in the middle "science" section who recognize that not all of these guises should be too easily dismissed without attempted retrievals. Put positively, however, the quest to overcome reductionisms motivates the search for appropriate models, conceptual resources, and empirical intimations for downward causation, understood variously, along the hierarchy of the sciences. The "science of emergence" is far from secure, but the careful work accomplished by the authors—many well known in the science-religion conversation—surely puts us a few steps further along in the discussion than we were before the appearance of this book."

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