In this final chapter of the book, Ellis succinctly restates his views and admittedly embarks on a polemic for his world-view of emergence. He gives a practical example in the field of learning to read and write and lays out the path for more work to be done. The following excerpts give a hint as to the nature and tone of the book, which for me has been most compelling.

“The conclusion arising from the arguments given in this book is that there are other forms of causation than those encompassed by physics and physical chemistry alone, or even in genetics and neuroscience. Higher levels of structure have causal powers, based on strong emergence of higher level structure and function that can shape what happens in the world.”

“So from where do higher level ideas, theories, and behavior arise, given that they cannot be uniquely determined by physics data in the early universe? The obvious explanation is that they arise from the autonomous behavior of the human mind acting in an intelligent way, supervenient on but not causally determined by the underlying physics.”

“…emergence of higher level causal powers is possible because of randomness at lower levels that allows for selection of functionality on the basis of higher level selection criteria. And that is a form of top-down causation, adapting emergent life to its environment. There are essentially three ways that emergent properties come into being:

·       Self-assembly: emergence in the natural world

·       Natural selection: emergence in the biological world

·       Design and construction in the man-made world.”

“…while purely bottom-up effects can produce key ingredients needed for the existence of life, and while they can produce many interesting structures and patterns, what they can achieve is nevertheless strictly limited: it cannot lead to the existence of life. This needs the initiation of the top-down causal transfer of information that is required for adaptive selection to take place.”

“Chance, necessity, and purpose intertwine in the real world around us. Jacques Monod famously claimed that all that matters in biology is chance and necessity. But this misses the key element of purpose or goal-seeking, which is crucial to life.”

“That random processes are a core feature of biological functioning is indicated by many kinds of evidence…At the micro-level, biological systems do not live in a carefully controlled environment: they face rampant randomness all the time. It turns out that they take advantage of the storm of randomness encountered at the molecular level: there is much evidence that molecular machinery in biology is designed to use that randomness to attain its desired results…Randomness is harnessed through the process of adaptive selection, which allows higher levels of order and meaning to emerge. It is then a virtue, not a vice. It allows purpose to be an active agent by selecting desired outcomes from a range of possibilities.”

“[Physiological systems] came into being through natural selection, because they promoted survival. Once in existence, passed from generation to generation by genes and developed in each body by developmental processes, they have specific functions or purposes that are allowed by and indeed implemented through the underlying physics. But that physics knows nothing of these purposes.”

“Chance, necessity, and purpose all occur in living systems. It is the relation between them that is at issue, and this is where information comes in…And how does purpose fit in? An element of randomness at the bottom does not mean that all that happens is just pure chance. Rather it is one of the foundations that, together with necessity, opens up the possibilities of purposeful function and meaningful mental life, realized through physical existence. It does not have to have the connotation of meaningless so often ascribed to it. It is the gateway to variety and possibility.”

“Lower level random processes allow adaptive selection to work, creating purposeful order, on the basis of physical and chemical laws, embodying necessity. Physics provides the possibility space for what happens, but does not determine the outcome. Top-down causation allows higher level causes be what they appear to be: real effective causes that select lower level outcomes. Adaptive selection creates new classes of information and new instances of those classes, e.g., the genetic code and DNA that uses that code. Random fluctuations plus quantum uncertainty provide the freedom at the bottom needed to allow this to happen.”

“It is the existence of random processes at lower levels that enables purposeful actions at higher levels to take place through selection of preferred outcomes according to some higher level selection criterion. This enables processes of adaptation and learning in accordance with the logic of some higher level purpose.”

“Some aspects of complex systems are emergent from the interaction between the underlying particles and forces, but others are not emergent: rather they arise from the nature of the external environment. A crucial point then is that this environment includes abstract Platonic entities, such as mathematical forms and the laws of logic, which are not reducible to or emergent from any physical entities. They do, however, have causal power. They are transcendent entities in that they are timeless and universal, but not of a physical nature.”

“The issue is whether there is real emergence of higher levels, with genuine causal powers in their own right (‘strong emergence’) or whether the higher levels are epiphenomena, with no real power of their own: they are dancing to the tune of the lower levels.”

“The point then is that physics as it currently stands is causally incomplete. It is not able to describe all the causes and effects shaping what happens in the world…Physics at the micro-level has an irreducible random element. This allows higher level selection processes to select lower level outcomes to suit higher level function or purpose.”

“The view put forward in this book has substantial social implications. The bottom-up view of causation has pervaded much scientific thought in general, and so for example has been a major factor in medicine and psychiatry. In each of these areas there has in effect been a long-standing tension between bottom-up and top-down views with major implications for medical practice and effectiveness. The view implied by this book is that it is crucial that top-down effects be taken into account as a major influence, as well as bottom-up (molecular and gene-based) effects.”

One of the last sections in the book is written jointly with Ellis’s wife, Carole Bloch. It explores the implications of the views of this book on “Learning to Read and Write.” It elucidates the nature of bottom-up and top-down causality in field of oral and written language. Essentially, they argue the reading should not be taught bottom-up by first learning syllables and grammar but top-down by seeing the elements of written words in their meaningful context. The details can come later.

Ellis closes the book with this final paragraph: “The daily world in which we live came about by imaginative investigation of possibilities, discarding those that don’t work: the adaptive process that is a central theme of this book, enabled by a modicum of randomness at the macro- and micro-levels, interacting with necessary physical processes. And it is these processes that also allow the emergence of the ordinariness of everyday life: which actually is quite extraordinary. Bottom-up effects are crucial to emergence. Physics underlies all. Nevertheless, the vitality of life, which arises from physics, transcends it.”