Emergence

The scientific revolution was part of a wider intellectual revolution, the Enlightenment, which also brought progress in other fields, especially moral and political philosophy, and in the institutions of society. Unfortunately, the term ‘the Enlightenment’ is used by historians and philosophers to denote a variety of different trends, some of them violently opposed to each other... But one thing that all conceptions of the Enlightenment agree on is that it was a rebellion, and specifically a rebellion against authority in regard to knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

We now have to accept, and rejoice in bringing about, our next transformation: to active agents of progress in the emerging rational society – and universe. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

The reason why higher-level subjects can be studied at all is that under special circumstances the stupendously complex behaviour of vast numbers of particles resolves itself into a measure of simplicity and comprehensibility. This is called emergence: high-level simplicity ‘emerges’ from low-level complexity. — David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality: Towards a Theory of Everything

That is a universal system of tallying. But, like levels of emergence, there is a hierarchy of universality. The next level above tallying is counting, which involves numerals. When tallying goats one is merely thinking ‘another, and another, and another’; but when counting them one is thinking ‘forty, forty-one, forty-two…’ It is only with hindsight that we can regard tally marks as a system of numerals, known as the ‘unary’ system. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

One consequence of this tradition of criticism was the emergence of a methodological rule that a scientific theory must be testable (though this was not made explicit at first). That is to say, the theory must make predictions which, if the theory were false, could be contradicted by the outcome of some possible observation. Thus, although scientific theories are not derived from experience, they can be tested by experience – by observation or experiment. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform The World

One consequence of this tradition of criticism was the emergence of a methodological rule that a scientific theory must be testable (though this was not made explicit at first). — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World