The Whitehead Encyclopedia (
2023)
Copy
BIBTEX
Abstract
Conwy Lloyd Morgan developed an evolutionary philosophy of nature that was a point of
departure and major influence on philosophers in the 1920s. He both influenced and was
influenced by Alfred North Whitehead. Following Henri Bergson, Lloyd Morgan argued for a
place for emergence to supplement Darwin’s thesis of continuity in evolution, developing
Herbert Spencer’s thesis that evolution proceeds from the inorganic to the organic to the
super-organic, associated with mind and society. In doing so, Lloyd Morgan offered an event
ontology and developed the notion of emergence within a monistic framework, giving a
central place to “organisms”. While the notion of emergence was marginalized for several
decades after the 1930s, it was revived towards the end of the Twentieth Century. While
some process philosophers inspired by Whitehead defended panexperientialism in
opposition to theories of emergence, recent process philosophers have embraced and
further developed the theory of emergence, arguing process philosophy is required to make
emergence intelligible. This has led to a new appreciation of the problem of emergence and
the relationship between Lloyd Morgan and Whitehead.