"Top down causation: What is its nature? Why can it happen?" - George Ellis, lauréat du prix Lemaître 2019

21 mai 2019

15:00

Louvain-la-Neuve

Auditoire Georges Lemaître, A10 Place de Sciences

On the occasion of his award of the 2019 Georges Lemaître International Prize (see https://uclouvain.be/fr/decouvrir/events/prix-georges-lemaitre-2019.html ), Professor George Ellis (University of Cape Town, South Africa) will deliver a Science Colloquium (in English), open to all, on Tuesday 21 May 2019 at 15:00h, Georges Lemaître Auditorium (A10), Place des Sciences

Top down causation: What is its nature? Why can it happen?

George Ellis, Cape Town

Life emerges out of physics in a bottom-up way: atoms are made of electrons and protons, molecules of atoms, cells of molecules, physiological systems (including brains) out of cells, and organisms out of physiological systems. Is there genuine emergence in this hierarchy, or are higher levels just epiphenomena, with the real action taking place only at the bottom levels? I will make the case that all levels are equally real, as claimed by Denis Noble, this emergence of causally effective higher level dynamics being made possible by top-down causation, whereby lower levels are conscripted to higher level purposes. I will discuss the different kinds of top-down causation that occur, and why this dynamic is possible.

The discussion is based on the book How can Physics Underlie the Mind? Top Down Causation in the Human Context: and the papers “Top down causation and emergence: some comments on mechanisms” and The Dynamical Emergence of Biology from Physics: Branching Causation via Biomolecules

Georges Lemaître International Prize