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We human beings face two insults to our knowledge: our ignorance of the future, and our inability to know how things work. Science retorts to these two insults by two means: trying out predictive hypotheses about outcomes by experiment, and understanding the workings of the whole by breaking it down into parts: prediction and reduction. Lestienne recognizes these two insults as being the same insult, and the two retorts as the same retort. If the insult is uncertainty, the retort is determinism. But determinism looks very much like selective hindsight; we see only what confirms our post-facto theory of the result. Lestienne invites us to consider a different answer: wholes emerge from parts as future emerges from present. Lestienne's three characters debate the coherence of the concept of emergence: does it complicate the concept of cause to the extent of depriving science of its usefulness? Can cause be top-down, from wholes to parts, as well as bottom-up, from parts to wholes? Can future possible wholes be "waiting" to be caused by the right chance combination of parts? Can there be more than one possible future? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is Emergence? Some scientists nowadays have revitalized this already old idea, according to which, when one climbs the ladders of complexity, from elementary particles to galaxies and amebas to humankind, new properties appear. "The whole is more than the sum of its parts," they say. Some among them even refer to a specific effect of the whole on the parts: Do not our conscious decisions change what the neurons in our brain do, thereby justifying our free will? Going beyond the old scientific ideal of reductionism, this revival of emergence augurs a revolution to come, somewhat similar to that which occurred when Galileo argued for the inversion of the old cosmology to adopt the Copernican point of view. Here thus the return of the three protagonists of the famous book of Galileo, brought up to date: Sagredo, Simplicio, and Salviata. Each day during a certain spring in Paris, they go to Saint Germain des Près, the museum of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, and so forth. They meet there famous scientists, such as James Clerk Maxwell, Charles Darwin, Ilya Prigogine, or Roger Sperry. With them, they discuss emergence in their respective disciplines. By listening to them, one can measure the formidable challenges of this new debate for science and philosophy and better understand phenomena as various as the shape of molecules, the workings of the brain, or, perhaps more importantly, the nature of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract During the last century it has often been argued that mind emerges from matter. Values, on the other hand, were rather thought to be (merely) supervenient. However, it seems reasonable to conclude that values are at least conceptually (or epistemically) emergent on neutral facts. This process of emergence, of course, is a temporal process. It may have taken a long time for certain values to arise, and they presuppose conscious memory and expectation. Moreover, even when constituted, values involve time. They do so mainly in two ways. Firstly, by having a temporal aspect, as in certain moral virtues and obligations. Secondly, by having time itself as their object. Examples can be seen in religion (sacred/secular time), economy ('time is money', time can be cheap or expensive, wasted or gained), sport (priority), science (idem) and art (rhythm and related properties). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract It has been suggested that time is a description of movement and relative change measured or compared against a standard, whether against sun and clocks in the physical world, or against mental constructs, such as the human experience of a subjective 'now'. The human brain perceives rates of motion and change through both its sensory systems and its higher order processing pathways, and it seems, is uniquely equipped by its structures to derive a range of temporalities across both the physical and non-material worlds. Because we are perceptive and creative in both physical and abstract domains, we are able to make precise clock-time measurements and evaluate the effects of motion and forces in physical space (as in Einstein's Theories of Relativity) and also distinguish the subjective temporalities that emerge as different qualities of motion expand our mental space to construct abstract meaning. This paper looks at the movement patterns of Stravinsky's 'Le Sacre du Printemps', a musical score for the 'Ballets Russes' which caused a riot at its première at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in May, 1913. With hindsight, its first audience was much disturbed, perhaps not only by the highly dissonant sounds accompanying 'primitive' movements and the act of self-sacrifice, but also subliminally, by the work's stark portrayal of pure temporalities: its activity, structure and organised complexity exposed them-and still exposes us, 100 years later-to the raw process of being and becoming, to both actual and emergent temporalities. In the course of 'Le Sacre du Printemps', Stravinsky's organisation of motion, of both rhythm and pitch, transforms our temporal experience from that of the here and now, the physical 'closeness between man and earth', to that of the highly abstract 'triumph of the human spirit', in what he called 'a single endless dialogue, an inconceivable conversation'. The means by which, and the point at which each of the four levels of organised movement emerges, is interesting in the light of our ability to construct temporality in both the physical and non-material realms. At the reductionist level, the work's movement away from the 'here and now' invites connections and relations with current ideas about time in physics, while its marriage of rhythms in sound and space, its association of sound and gesture, and its organisation of motion creates a temporal entity whose effect upon the psyche is consistent with what is now known about the brain's higher-order processing of music and movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Both the theory and the terminology of Albertus Magnus's philosophical psychology in the thirteenth century bear an extraordinary resemblance to twenty-first century descriptions of emergent systems. In Albert's description of the temporal drama of human foetal life, the emergent, 'intellectual' energies of human psychê or anima or soul cannot be at all predicated on the material or psychic agents that give rise to them. Though standing in a real continuity with those natural, causal agents, human psyche knows itself as existing discontinuously from them and as enacting, in and through the dimension of time, kinds of knowledge and types of experience which display complex potentialities that appear to be irreducible, or, at the least, not fully measurable: in art, in science, and also in cultic action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract It is striking to note to what extent the time issue in education is commonly understood in terms of chronology. It is an institutional and linear time that is divided and then fitted back together like a Russian doll in an analytical approach. The conception of time is reversible and possesses the same characteristics as space. It is a paradox that this institutional rationalization of time by reversible chronological divisions barely conceals the whole concrete and living reality of human time, which is a continuous process of change that philosophers generally call duration. On the contrary, far from the above reduction, its specificity lies in its irreversibility. This article intends to present both the results of empirical research on cooperative pedagogy and its current theorization. The emergence of complexity in time is visible in the primacy given to processes in the educational relationship. The way the multiple scales of complexity are superposed is reflected in the cooperative organization of work, for a new educational temporality which results in an increase in joyful emergences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper provides a general overview of emergence, and then examines the role emergence plays in different areas of science and theology, including big history or the evolutionary epic, religious and theistic naturalism. Critical remarks on the notions of time expressed in these discourses are also provided. The paper then assesses J.T. Fraser's hierarchical theory of time in relation to emergence, and adduces the position Fraser would take with respect to emergence. Finally, the paper concludes with a playful coda from the standpoint of a man of letters, for whom letters have an elemental importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the English translation of Dr. Remy Lestienne's "Dialogues Sur L'Emergence" which follows 3 scholars as they explore a concept that may portend a paradigm shift in the sciences. Dr. Frederick Turner provides the introduction to "Dialogues About Emergence" where he brings his wide-ranging intellect and adds his own voice to the dialogue.

An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including the philosophical work by J. T. Fraser on time, emergence and temporalities in education, and time perception in one's brain.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics, such as the conference Time and Emergence that was held in Paris, France in 2011 and definition of emergence in time studies.