1 Accepted paper - Routledge Handbook of Emergence, Sophie Gibb, Robin Findlay, & Tom Lancaster (eds.). London: Routledge Publishers. Emergence in the Social Sciences Julie Zahle & Tuukka Kaidesoja 1. Introduction In the social sciences, discussions of emergence mainly focus on social phenomena as they emerge from individuals. Social phenomena are commonly taken to be exemplified by universities, states, traffic jams, ǁealth distƌiďutioŶs, deĐlaƌatioŶ of ǁaƌs, fiƌŵs’ fiƌiŶg of eŵploLJees, aŶd Ŷoƌŵs. “oĐial sĐieŶtists ǁho iŶǀoke the notion of emergence typically maintain that social phenomena are emergent insofar as they arise from individuals and possess certain additional features such as being novel, irreducible, unexplainable, and unpredictable relative to individuals. Among social scientists, there is no consensus as to which features should be regarded as the additional features constitutive of emergence. Moreover, the same features are sometimes characterized in divergent ways. Accordingly, diverse notions of emergence are being advocated in the social sciences. Éŵile Duƌkheiŵ’s ǁoƌk fƌoŵ aƌouŶd the tuƌŶ of the ϭϵ th century is often regarded as containing one of the earliest social scientific discussions of emergence even though he does not use the teƌŵ eŵeƌgeŶĐe ;“aǁLJeƌ ϮϬϬϱ:ϭϬϬͿ. IŶ the folloǁiŶg deĐades, the ŶotioŶ of eŵeƌgeŶĐe is ƌatheƌ sporadically brought up. For instance, it is cursorily mentioned by social scientists such as Talcott Parsons, George Homans, and Peter Blau (Parsons 1968[1937], Homans 1950, Blau 1964). It is not until the latter part of the 20 th century that the idea of emergence begins to receive more sustained attention in social theorizing. During this period, a number of influential approaches that appeal to emergence come into being including the school of critical realism (see Bhaskar 1998[1979]), systems theory à la Niklas Luhmann (see Luhmann 1995[1984]), and agent-based computational modeling (see Epstein and Axtell 1996). Today, the idea of emergence continues to be explored and debated in the social sciences. One way in which to characterize current discussions is to note that some social scientists defend an epistemic notion of emergence, that is, they view emergence as a feature that social phenomena have relative to our limited knowledge of them, whereas others opt for an ontological notion of emergence, that is, they regard emergence as a feature of social phenomena independently of our knowledge about them. Ontological notions of emergence tend to be invoked in the context of discussions about how social phenomena should be explained and whether properties of social entities can somehow be reduced to properties of individuals. It is ontological notions, rather than epistemic ones, that have received most attention in recent social scientific debates. In this chapter, we examine the theories of ontological emergence advanced by two proponents of critical realism, Roy Bhaskar and Dave Elder-Vass. The school of critical realism is arguably the social scientific approach in which the notion of emergence has played – and continues to play – the most central role. Moreover, it is currently a highly influential social scientific movement with many followers, its own Journal, viz. Journal of Critical Realism, LJeaƌlLJ ĐoŶfeƌeŶĐes, aŶd so oŶ. RoLJ Bhaskaƌ’s tǁo seminal works, A Realist Theory of Science from 1975 and The Possibility of Naturalism from 1979, laid the foundation for the movement (Bhaskar 1978[1975]; 1998[1979]). Subsequently, his views have been