Emergence and Missing hin]{s 419 



events as creative, in relation to the many novehies that Hfe 

 has presented, and particularly in relation to the transcend- 

 ent nature of different classes of phenomena. It makes 

 possible a reconsideration of many of the age-long problems 

 from a fresh point of view. Especially helpful is it in con- 

 nection with certain problems that have presented them- 

 selves in the form of mutually exclusive alternatives about 

 which we could never come to any conclusion — mechanism 

 as against vitalism is only one of these. There are also ma- 

 terialism against idealism or spiritualism, determinism against 

 freedom, naturalism against supernaturalism. And perhaps 

 " heredity versus environment " is but another of these ap- 

 parent contradictions upon which the concept of emergence 

 will help us throw some light. 



It is possible further that " emergence " will facilitate 

 the clearing up of a great deal of confusion about " missing 

 links." Any evolutionary point of view must recognize 

 many sharp breaks and assimilate them into an orderly 

 scheme of thought. These breaks need not represent inter- 

 mediary stages in development, as we had been taught to 

 think, but particular situations, nodal points, out of which 

 emerged unpredictable departures, or divergences from the 

 previous line of development. Adventitious buds appear 

 upon the stem of a plant at unpredictable points: yet no- 

 body looks upon them as miracles, or as intrusions upon the 

 laws of growth. We think of them rather as the normal 

 events in certain, but to us unknown, situations. In the 

 same way we look upon the reaction between an animal and 

 its bacterial parasites as normal, in the sense of conforming 

 to general causo-mechanical principles, even though we can- 

 not anticipate an infection or predict in detail the course 

 of a disease. It is sufficient that from a certain juxtaposition 

 of host and parasite certain phenomena will emerge, which 

 neither member of the combinations shows by itself. 



So we may conceive life as emerging, in the course of 

 time, from a certain combination of non-living matter, as 

 certain compounds with their peculiar properties emerged 



