Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical

Volume 29, Issue 3, 2002/2003

Response to Clayton
Taxonomy of the Types and Orders of Emergence

Inappropriately reductive or deterministic appropriations of science haunt Philip Clayton’s otherwise instructive appropriation of Michael Polanyi’s thought for theological and ethical reflection. The work at hand utilizes contemporary complexity theory to augment Polanyi’s notions of emergence and hierarchy and to provide a vision within which moral responsibility and theological inquiry make sense. It sets forth types and orders of emergence that bypass untenable notions of causality, reducibility, and determinism.