Emergence and Levels of Analysis in Scientific Studies

 Dr. Husen reads and thinks his way through Novikoff, A. B. (1945). The concept of integrative levels and biology. Science, 101(2618), 209-215.

This is a seminal article, written in 1945 at the end of WWII, about the concept of emergence and the importance of understanding the concept of integrative levels of analysis.

He also clarifies why vitalism (the idea that there's a vital spirt in matter accounting for life), teleologisms, anthropomorphism, and organicism all fail completely because of a failure to understanding the distinction between different integrative levels of life particularly for the human.

Why is it that in the 35 million years of data on insects there has been no innovation or change in their social structure / culture? Why, he says, when you compare out 6 to 8 thousand years of known history there has been enormous change. The key to understanding such phenomena is our culture--i.e. Humans unlike other animals pass on our knowledge and technology to the next generation which broadens and builds on that doxa (as Dr. Baumeister calls cultural knowledge). 

That growth is not founded on biology; it is founded on cultural transmission and the growth of knowledge, technology and ethics. 

Below are quotes from the article I found important. What Novikoff found especially disturbing with the confusion of levels of analysis and a failure to recognize that higher levels of organization cannot be predicted a priori from the principles governing for example cellular activity is that such confusion was being used by fascists during WWII to justify prejudice and genocide. The quotes below from his article bring the error of such thinking out. I bolded the bit about insects and humans because I think that makes a particularly salient case for the error:

"Anthropomorphism-endowing animals, and even plants, with human attributes, psychical and social transports the higher level (social) bodily into the lower level (biological). In doing so, it presents a
wholly erroneous picture of the animal. The aspects of behavior common to man and animals are studied in comparative psychology, just as comparative cytology studies the uniformity of structure of diverse cells and comparative biochemistry the fundamental chemical changes common to all cells and organisms. Often, the significance of certain aspects of man's behavior (e.g., instincts) can be illuminated by studies on lower animals where the problem may be analyzed more directly. And in the anthropoid apes, it is possible to investigate the beginning of reflective thought and of social influences on behavior.... 

Thinking in high-speed terms of these low-speed phenomena leads almost inevitably to teleological conceptions, ascribing these phenomena to a divine purpose in nature. The terrestrial mammal has no gills because the air, containing little water, would dry out the exposed soft tissues ; the earthworm has no eyes because"1t has no need for them, buried as it is in the ground. Such teleological reasoning is carried over even to changes which are directly observable. The heart beats in order to bring food-laden blood to all cells of the organism. The leaf bends to the 'light in order to intercept more energy for photosynthesis. There is no awareness that ascribing such purposive behavior to the heart or the plant imparts the ability to reason and to look into the future, in one case to a small individual part of the organism, and, in the other, to an organism which lacks a nervous system, let alone a brain !"
"The history of biology demonstrates that teleology explains nothing, and, worse still, hampers the search for explanations and causes." 

"A. E. Emerson acknowledges the distinction between biological and social sciences but then says, "Society is surely a manifestation of fundamental life attributes which are shared with other biological systems and the division between the social and non-social is not sharp."15 

Elsewhere, he maintains that "the evolution of human social and ethical characteristics is governed by the same forces which have been directing organismic evolution through the ages.6

However, the material in Emerson's articles reveals the basic difference between the forces making for change in human society and those producing changes in "organismic evolution." There has apparently been no important change in the society of insects in the thirty-five million years since the Oligocene period. Since insects possess neither intelligence nor the ability to transmit the results of experience to others, change is dependent on the slow process of germinal change (mutation) and their society is therefore relatively fixed. On the other hand, in the seven or eight thousand years of recorded history, man's society has continually changed.; μecause of the transmission of experience symbolized by tools, language, printing, photography, etc., there is social-cultural inheritance as well as biological inheritance. It is the plasticity of man's intelligence which brings ethics into being. While man's social relations have undergone  marked transformation, his biology has remained essentially unchanged. What small biological change has occurred (e.g., increased mean length of life) has been the result and not the cause of social development". 

"The "forces . . . governing . . • human social and ethical characteristics" have been not biological but

social, the relation of man to changing technological and economic relations. The "forces . . . governing
. . . organismic evolution through the ages" have been biological (mutation, etc.). That is why whatever
similarities one notes in animal and human societies must be purely formal and therefore meaningless.
Gerard accepts the old analogy between society and the living organism and, by what Simpson has aptly
described as the "most reckless, unjustified, and nonscientific extrapolation,"17 he draws a great many
parallels between aspects of society and organisms. Thus, he equates scientists with receptors,1 8 the formation of an army by a nation with the fusion of slime molds in the face of "emergency conditions,"19 altruism of men with "service and mutual helpfulness seen in the interplay of cell nucleus and chloroplast,"20 and so on. It is unnecessary to enumerate all the parallels. In every one of them, the social activities for which Gerard finds biological counterparts are not of biological origin but are the results of long processes of social development. We can not overlook the fact that the origin of social integrations of rational men in society is fundamentally distinct from that of biological integration of masses of protoplasm in the living organism. Aside from its refinement in terms of modern biological data, the organism-society analogy of Gerard is the same as that of Herbert Spencer in which, Needham has pointed out, instead of seeking the economic basis of social relations, he "elaborates to a degree sometimes almost fantastic the analogy between animal and social organisms." 21 Just as the striking but fundamentally misleading analogy between living organisms and non-living engines
has stimulated both mechanical and vitalistic biology, so this organism-society analogy leads to
erroneous and dangerous social conclusions as well as to anthropomorphism.22"

"Needham26 has demonstrated that the most dangerous aspect of the reduction of social phenomena to the biological level, at the present historical moment, is the basis it provides for fascist "philosophy.'' The central point in this "philosophy" is the thesis that man's biology decides his social behavior, and ruthless oppression of certain groups of people is justified because these groups are for all times fixed as "inferior'' by their biology."

"Gerard's view gives indirect support to this thesis, by making biological principles the guide for social thought and action. A sharp separation of the two levels--biological and social-must precede a fruitful discussion of how man's society can be kept free and democratic. That discussion must be based on a study, by means appropriate to the level, of the social forces making for change. Only a scientific analysis of these forces will enable man to speed social progress. It is perhaps not surprising that Gerard's one-sided view of evolution-which ignores the qualitative differences of successive levels of integration and the specific part-whole relationships in each-should lead him to embrace the concept of purpose.27 The retarding influence of teleological thinking on the advance of biological science has already been referred to. Here we add our agreement with Huxley that any "apparent purpose" in evolution is "just as much a product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to earth or the ebb and flow of the tides. It is we who have read purpose into evolution, as earlier men projected will and emotion into inorganic phenomena like storm or earthquake. If we wish. to work towards
a purpose for the future of man, we must formulate that purpose ourselves. Purposes in life are made,
not found."28" 

“The concept of integrative levels describes the progress of evolution of the inanimate, animate and social worlds. It maintains that such progress is the result of forces which differ in each level and which can properly be described only by laws which are unique for each level. Since higher level phenomena always include phenomena at lower levels, one can not fully understand the higher levels without an understanding of the lower level phenomena as well. But a knowledge of the lower levels does not enable us to predict, a priori, what will occur at a higher level. Although some may have validity for the higher level, laws of a lower level are inadequate to describe the higher level.
The law's unique to the higher level can be discovered by approaches appropriate to the particular level; to do otherwise is invalid scientifically and, in some instances, dangerous socially.

By stressing the material interrelationships of parts and whole and the qualitative uniqueness of each level of integration, the concept is of genuine help to biologists. Its dialectical approach avoids "organicism," "fatalism" and mechanical "atomism," and helps attain a fuller understanding of such problems as the interrelations of cellular structure and metabolism, of cell and organism in ontogeny and in adult physiology, of individual ana' population biologies, of biological and social factors in the development of man's behavior; and the mechanisms responsible for organic evolution. By avoiding teleology, the concept aids the search for causes of biological phenomena. The concept of integrative levels indicates to research biologists the crucial aspects of their problems, the solution of which puts the known facts into proper perspective · by revealing the decisive element, the element imparting the uniqueness to the phenomena under study. It emphasizes the importance of studying the "mesoforms," matter at the point of transition from one level of organization to the next, so as to deepen our understanding of the unique qualities of the higher level. For example, it would indicate that an intensive study of the transition region between the chemical and biological levels, between protein and
protoplasm, will help reveal the organizing relations unique to living matter and fundamental to vital
activities.

As biologists become more familiar with the concept, a greater number will recognize its value both
as an aid in the understanding of biological data already accumulated and as a reliable guide for research. Such recognition of its value will, however, be delayed by any presentation which creates the
erroneous impression that it is metaphysical, teleological or mystical. This article has pointed to shortcomings in the presentation of the concept in some recent biological literature, with the hope that this may help make future references to the concept more reliable.”

Ciao, Dr. James (Jim) Husen