William C. Wimsatt (2007). Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI-10.2307/j.ctv1pncnrh.
Key takeaways
Seeded from the citing paper, not read. Griesemer and Shavit (LIT-188) take two concepts from it. Generative entrenchment: a core element that later-evolved ones “depend on for their existence and character, so that perturbations of it will tend to be catastrophic to the whole system while changes in the later interactions tend to lead to tolerable system changes” (§2). Aggregativity: contributions that sum without depending on their organization, the mark of coordination in a collection (§1). Wimsatt’s paper on aggregativity is held as LIT-707, Unavailable.
Standing in the record
Registered on 2026-11-01 from the re-reading of LIT-188 (NOTE-173). The record’s entrenchment claims (CLAIM-184, CLAIM-185) state the idea without this source. The record’s question for a reading is whether Wimsatt’s entrenchment is an acyclic dependency order or allows the core to be maintained by what depends on it, since only the second can give closure (CLAIM-531).