The Emergence of Emergence

Abstract In this chapter, it is argued that Plato was the first to introduce emergence in the history of Western thought, in his dialogue the Theaetetus. Emergence serves to address what would have otherwise been left as an open problem within Plato’s metaphysical system. He conceives of his Forms, for example, of Beauty, Goodness, and so on, as each being one, and assumes that what is one cannot have parts, because what has parts is as many as its parts. Yet he admits in his ontology some Forms that we would call ‘structural’, and thus complex, for example the Forms of Duality and of Equality. If they are complex, do they have parts, and are they thereby many, instead of one each? Plato’s insight, it is argued, is that something can be complex and yet partless. On the strength of this insight, Plato introduces an account of composition in the Theaetetus such that, when it obtains, the resulting entity is complex, arising from many parts/elements, but being itself without parts and hence one. This chapter argues that this is a case of emergence (even if Plato does not have the terminology and conceptual apparatus to identify it as such), since the emergent entity has numerical novelty in relation to its base. It is further argued that Plato’s account of emergence, which is different from modern alternatives, was foundational for Aristotle’s successive theory of substance, particularly with respect to question of the unity of his substance.