"Rosemary Desjardins argues boldly and brilliantly that the Theaetetus contains not only an answer to the question of the character of knowledge, but considerably more besides — an outline of a Platonic ontology. That ontology is neither materialist nor idealist (it is not a theory of forms), but like the twentieth century theory known as generative emergence holds that beings are particular interactive combinations of material elements. On this view, while wholes (for example, words, to use a Platonic model) may be analyzed into their elemental parts (letters), each whole has a property or quality separate from the aggregated properties of its parts."
— Stephen G. Salkever, 1991 review of The Rational Enterprise : Logos in Plato's Theaetetus (SUNY Press, 1990)
See also "strong emergence" in this journal.