Emergence, contextuality, the reality and causal efficacy of abstract entities -- such closely related concepts are what this major effort aims to establish the validity and importance of. It advances top-down causation not to reject the concept of scientific reductionism (bottom-up causation) but to complement it. If I were to try to list the authors of other books I have read with a similar philosophy, names like Stuart Kauffman, Terence Deacon, Daniel Dennett, and Paul Davies would come to mind. Reading Ellis's big volume does require some stamina -- the organization is very methodical (with numbered sections, subsections, and sub-subsections) and the point-making is quite repetitious.