Emergence 415 



erties they ought to have. As a matter of fact he has no 

 way of knowing, in advance, what the properties of a com- 

 pound would be. The classical case of common water 

 illustrates this. 



Evtergence 



There is absolutely nothing in the behavior of oxygen 

 or that of hydrogen which would enable one to predict the 

 qualities of the compound, hydrogen oxid or water. Two 

 tasteless, colorless, odorless gases, invisible and intangible, 

 combine with more or less violence and there comes forth 

 a totally different substance — a colorless and tasteless and 

 odorless liquid of very distinct properties. These properties 

 are in no sense the summation of the properties of oxygen 

 and hydrogen. In the language of George Henry Lewes, 

 writing in 1875, the character of water emerges from the 

 situation. Water here manifests something new, something 

 that did not exist before, and something which could not 

 be predicted from a knowledge of the constituents, oxygen 

 and hydrogen. 



The conception of emergence had been recognized much 

 earlier, but has become in modern times a more and more 

 conscious part of our thinking. We find many kinds of 

 emergence. From every distinct situation there comes forth 

 something other than is implied in the mere addition of the 

 elements. Alloys of metals present such examples — we have 

 new properties in the way of hardness, melting point, " stain- 

 lessness," ductility, that are not the mere resultants of ad- 

 dition or subtraction. When a salt is formed from the 

 interaction of an acid and a base, there emerge new qualities 

 that are present in neither member of the combination. The 

 synthetic chemist can make endless combinations of a few 

 atoms of two or three elements. The same proportions of 

 identical elements will yield an endless series of substances 

 with varied properties and values. When the composition 

 of thyroxin, a characteristic product of the thyroid gland, 



