The concept of emergence in the XIXth century: From natural theology to biology

Abstract

During the first half of the XIXth century, the theologians who developed the standpoint of natural theology for zoology were divided into two camps concerning the delicate question of animal instinct. This question, a direct descendant of the dispute over the souls of beasts, opposed those who lent to the animal some reason to those who argued a total break between animality and humanity. The latter argued that animal behavior was directed by instinct enacting a project of which the animal is ignorant. The extraordinary variety of animal behavior and its marvelous efficiency could therefore only be the expression of the all powerfulness of the world creating divinity. In this conception one encounters one of the main uses of the physicotheological proof of the existence of God proposed by the theists. The physico-theological argument was the basis of the discourse of natural theology, and was adopted time and time again by all naturalist ecclesiastics of the XIXth century. Natural theology belongs to religious immanentism since it was developed in opposition to revealed theology that is thoroughly transcendental. We would like to show how the immanentist conception, played-and still does today-a decisive part in understanding the concepts of emergence and self-organization that life and human sciences use to explain development.© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.