The concept of emergence : a brief history and a philosophical analysis of an ontological regulative principle of organization

Emergence is it is a concept that should undergo more careful philosophical analysis. This paper aims to promote the idea that "emergence" should be taken as an ontological regulative principle (rather than a conceptual instrument able to provide a quick empirical answer to many concrete scientific problems). The usefulness of the proposed approach rests in the fact that it could work as an overarching theoretical framework for the ever-growing body of theories and empirical data provided by natural and social sciences; it could also help to overcome (at least partly) the extreme over-specialization that characterizes contemporary knowledge. Furthermore, it could work as a programmatic framework for comparing and combining data and theories belonging to very different fields - from the natural to the social sciences - but related to one single, very complicated entity, that is, Man. So, after a short history of the concept of emergence, an analysis of its ontological nature will follow; then some specific philosophical problems - like the metaphoric aspects of the emergentist approach, or the ontological unification of every kind of emergence - will be discussed. Afterward this paper will provide a few reasons for supporting a regulative approach to emergence and will illustrate its advantages - supplying an example/proposal taken from the debate about free will.