Social emergence and unpredictability

I analyse arguments for social emergentism based on the notion of unpredictability. After examining and ultimately rejecting weak emergentism as relevant theoretical counterpart to (predictive) reductionism, I discuss three arguments asserting that social phenomena should be considered strongly emergent as they are in-principle unpredictable. The main results are a clearer grasp of the premises underlying an emergentist case for unpredictability and that none of the discussed arguments succeeds when confronted with the actual practice of contemporary social science. This conclusion contributes to a deeper understanding of the concept of unpredictability and the prospects of a theory of emergence in social science.