3. Reductionism The properties of one scientific domain consists of properties of a more elementary scientific domain (Kim 2005, 164). Modern reductionism primarily holds that all of reality can be explained by using only physical, sub-atomic, entities and denies the existence of mental realities as a separate kind of existence. Any reference to a higher type of existence results from a lack of information about the physical entities that are involved. Causation always moves from the bottom-up, from the basic physical entities to higher forms of organization. For example, thought is caused by the physical components of the brain. Reductionism allows for weak emergence but not strong emergence and top-down causation (Davies 2006, 37). Panentheism critiques reductionism as an oversimplification of reality and the experience of reality. 4. Supervenience Generally refers to a relation between properties. Popular usage refers to one property depending on another property such as mind being a quality that supervenes on physical structures. Analytic philosophy instead emphasizes a logical relation between classes of properties with a variety of understandings of the nature of the relationship (Leuenberger 2008; McLaughlin and Bennett 2014). 5. Emergence A. Meaning: Emergence is a process that occurs when a new property arises out of a combination of elements. The traditional example is that water emerges out of the combination of oxygen and hydrogen atoms in certain proportions. The concept of emergence arose in a scientific response to reductionistic explanations of reality that failed to recognize the importance of a system as a whole as well as the parts of that whole (Clayton 2004a, 85). Four characteristics are involved in emergence: 1) ontological monism but not physicalism, 2) emergence of properties that are potential in complex objects, but absent from any of the object’s parts, and distinct from any structural property of the object, 3) recognizing distinct levels of causal relations, and 4) downward causation that cannot be reduced to the structural macro-properties (Clayton 2006a, 2–4). Emergence may be either strong or weak. Strong emergence understands evolution to produce new and distinct levels characterized by their own laws, regularities, or causal forces. Weak emergence holds that the new level follows the fundamental causal process of physics (Clayton 2004c, 9). Strong emergence is also known as ontological emergence and weak as epistemological emergence (Clayton 2006b, 67). Strong emergence holds that genuinely new causal agents or processes come into existence over the course of evolutionary history. Weak emergence insists that as new patterns emerge, the fundamental processes remain ultimately physical. B. Role in panentheism: Emergence as a scientific concept helps explain the “in” of panentheism (Clayton 2004a, 84). The scientific recognition of the limitations of reductionistic understandings of reality led to an interest in emergence as recognition of the importance of the system as a whole as well as the parts of the whole (Clayton 2004a, 85). Further, the scientific understanding of matter as having a propensity to self-organization leading to a more and more complex system makes possible an internalist understanding of God’s action and creativity (Clayton 2001, 209). Emergence provides the best current way to understand the immanence of God in the world (Clayton 2004a, 87) by exemplifying the radically different sorts of inclusion relations found in the natural world (Clayton 2008a, 132). 6. Top-Down Causation