Emergent evolution is a theory that is of importance for the life sciences for various reasons. First, it dispenses with the Aristotelian idea that life originated by generatio spontanea (spontaneous generation of life from inanimate matter), a view that was disproved by the bacteriologist Louis Pasteur in 1862 but, under the term “abiogenesis,” is still secretly cherished by evolutionists. The theory also liberates us from the twist of thought that reason is the sheer product of an evolutionary process that was discovered by that very same reason. Furthermore, it causes us to reflect on the question of whether the standard picture of evolution pushes us into a physicalist straightjacket. It also draws our attention to the many sides of the evolutionary process: its idionomic development on physical, biotic, vegetative, sensitive, and mental levels. It also focusses us on the question of how, in a living organism, higher and lower functions correlate and how basal functions contribute to the unfolding of higher life forms. Finally, it confronts us with another kind of correlation: the question of how the evolution of life forms is accompanied by changes in the surrounding world.

The correlation problem brings us into contact with the direction in philosophy that is known as holism. Thus, in this chapter I first give a brief introduction to the concept of holism (section 1).