Generativity

Here we place special emphasis on the generative character of distinction we have already discovered. It will be important later.

As it takes place, distinction not only forms its sides, but always produces a new determination that is reducible neither to them nor to the distinction between them. In the experience of primary distinction, the closest name for such a determination was becoming. The same principle continues to operate: each distinction changes the conditions of those that follow, allowing new forms and phenomena to arise. It is this irreducibility of what arises to what has already been distinguished that makes radical novelty unavoidable in the world.

We do not introduce emergence as a separate explanatory principle. What is usually described as the emergence of irreducible novelty is considered here as a consequence of the generativity of distinction we have already discovered.

Generativity should also not be confused with teleology: it does not presuppose a predetermined direction or purpose. Generativity means only that the result of an operation changes the conditions of the next one and thereby produces what had not previously been distinguished.