Lloyd Morgan’s Formative Period

Abstract

Although emergent evolution was not the exclusive property of any one thinker, the comparative psychologist Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936) was the central figure in its development.¹ Lloyd Morgan’s philosophical work can be divided into three periods. The first was that of his pre-emergentist writings from 1882 to 1912, during which time Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Wallace, and Romanes were all important influences. The second period was that of the development of emergent evolution from 1912–15. The further influences of a number of theorists can be identified: J. S. Mill, G. H. Lewes, Henri Bergson, E. G. Spaulding, and Walter Marvin. Lloyd Morgan’s emergent evolution was the result of a process of creative synthesis of these two groups of influences, and as a result he was the author of a new philosophy of evolution which, for the first time, featured the emergence of qualitative novelty as its central concept. In the third period from 1915 to his death in 1936, Lloyd Morgan systematically expounded and defended emergent evolution. During this time emergent evolution was a vital philosophical trend, and its basic theses were adopted and debated by a large group of philosophers and biologists.