ABSTRACT
For students of social and cultural evolution, the main challenge is to understand the whys and wherefores of what Karl Popper calls emergent novelty, that is, 'a characteristic of higher systemic levels that cannot be predicted from knowledge of lower systemic levels' (Flannery 1986:513). But if, as Popper implies, the emergent movement is not mechanistic, it is also true that nothing comes from nothing. Accordingly, the relationship between lower and higher systemic levels must be conceived to involve a process. In human systems this process is typically very complex, involving diverse elements, agencies, and sub-processes, the particular combination of which is highly contingent and therefore inherently improbable; hence our inability to predict the emergence of novelty.
