Re: [Marxism] What is wrong with positivism?

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Haines Brown wrote:
> Again, you ask a question of an amateur ;-(. You have received several
> short answers to your original question that are good.

i did some searching around to see how the term is used, and came across 
"The Concept of Emergence in Complexity Science: Finding Coherence 
between Theory and Practice":

http://www.ini.unizh.ch/~markus/articles/Emergence_def.pdf

    2.1 assumption one: ontological monism The first of assumption of
    emergentism, ontological monism, has its roots in the writings of
    the British Emergentists of the 1920s. Emergentism as a
    philosophical position was formulated by C.D. Broad and others as a
    compromise between reductionism (called "mechanism" at that time)
    and vitalism (Broad (1925)). The vitalist position claimed the
    existence of a life-substance, inherently different from the
    inanimate stuff found in rocks and clouds, which accounted for
    life’s unique properties. Promoted by Henri Bergson, this position
    seemed suspect to many scientists, as it postulated entities (like
    Bergson’s ‘elan vitale’) which were out of the reach of scientific
    investigation. Seeming to be unparsimonious and unscientific,
    emergentists and reductionists ruled out vitalism and embraced
    ontological monism.


Les
formerly WA1IGF




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