George Henry Lewes

George Henry Lewes was a 19th-century philosopher and critic who contributed to the understanding of emergentism, which posits that complex systems can arise from simpler interactions that cannot be fully explained by their individual parts. This contrasts with reductionism, which seeks to explain systems by breaking them down into basic components. Lewes argued that higher-level characteristics, especially in psychology and biology, emerge from but are not reducible to lower-level processes. His work helped bridge the gap between scientific analyses and the complexities of human experience, emphasizing that understanding phenomena often requires appreciating their emergent qualities.