Abstract

The concept of emergence—which I define as the construction of functional structures in complex systems that achieve a focus of systematic behaviour as they constrain the behaviour of individual components—plays a crucial role in debates in philosophical reflection on science as a whole as well as in the fields of biology, social science and cognitive science. In this article I examine how the philosophy of Deleuze and that of Deleuze and Guattari can help us see some of the most important implications of these debates.