Human Emergence and Our Place in the Natural World

David Sprintzen

ISBN 10: 3031734378 / ISBN 13: 9783031734373

Published by Springer, 2024

About this Item

Druck auf Anfrage Neuware - Printed after ordering - This book challenges the prevailing, though often unacknowledged, view among most practicing scientists and philosophers that human free will is incompatible with the natural causality that is the basic presupposition of modern science. That position is essentially based on the reductionist view of modern physics that all complex phenomena are thought to be ultimately causally explainable solely as a function of the action of their elemental constituents.The book argues that this mainstream opinion is the appropriate logical result of an inadequate conception of the way nature works. To show this the book first details the fundamental philosophical incoherence in the prevailing scientific world view. It then justifies the critique by outlining and re-describing some key findings of modern science, and presents three related alternative aspects by which we can understand the occurrence of natural emergence. In so doing it is suggested that emergence is a pervasive phenomenon in the natural world, and that human free will is an entirely understandable development of these natural processes, when properly understood, in which humanity is appropriately seen as a natural emergent within the evolutionary processes operating in accord with natural selection.Human Emergence and Our Place in the Natural World is essential reading for all philosophers of metaphysics and of science.

Seller Inventory # 9783031734373

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Human Emergence and Our Place in the Natural World
• Publisher: Springer
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3031734378
• ISBN 13: 9783031734373
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 216W x 153H x 12D millimeters 216 millimeters width by 153 millimeters height by 12 millimeters depth
• Weight: 291 grams

About this title

Synopsis

This book challenges the prevailing, though often unacknowledged, view among most practicing scientists and philosophers that human free will is incompatible with the natural causality that is the basic presupposition of modern science. That position is essentially based on the reductionist view of modern physics that all complex phenomena are thought to be ultimately causally explainable solely as a function of the action of their elemental constituents.
The book argues that this mainstream opinion is the appropriate logical result of an inadequate conception of the way nature works. To show this the book first details the fundamental philosophical incoherence in the prevailing scientific world view. It then justifies the critique by outlining and re-describing some key findings of modern science, and presents three related alternative aspects by which we can understand the occurrence of natural emergence.  In so doing it is suggested that emergence is a pervasive phenomenon in the natural world, and that human free will is an entirely understandable development of these natural processes, when properly understood, in which humanity is appropriately seen as a natural emergent within the evolutionary processes operating in accord with natural selection.
Human Emergence and Our Place in the Natural World is essential reading for all philosophers of metaphysics and of science.

About the Author

David Sprintzen is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Long Island University.