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In philosophy, systems theory, science, and
art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. Emergence plays a central role in theories of
integrative level An integrative level, or level of organization, is a set of phenomena emerging from pre-existing phenomena of a lower level. The levels concept is an intellectual framework for structuring reality. It arranges all entities, structures, and processes ...
s and of
complex system A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication s ...
s. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in
biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...
is an emergent property of chemistry. In philosophy, theories that emphasize emergent properties have been called emergentism.


In philosophy

Philosophers often understand emergence as a claim about the
etiology Etiology (pronounced ; alternatively: aetiology or ætiology) is the study of causation or origination. The word is derived from the Greek (''aitiología'') "giving a reason for" (, ''aitía'', "cause"); and ('' -logía''). More completely, e ...
of a system's properties. An emergent property of a system, in this context, is one that is not a property of any component of that system, but is still a feature of the system as a whole. Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950), one of the first modern philosophers to write on emergence, termed this a ''categorial novum'' (new category).


Definitions

This concept of emergence dates from at least the time of Aristotle.Aristotle, '' Metaphysics (Aristotle)'', Book VIII (Eta) 1045a 8–10: "... the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts ...", i.e., the whole is other than the sum of the parts. The many scientists and philosophers who have written on the concept include John Stuart Mill ('' Composition of Causes'', 1843) and
Julian Huxley Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. ...
(1887–1975). The philosopher G. H. Lewes coined the term "emergent" in 1875, distinguishing it from the merely "resultant":
Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same – their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference.
In 1999 economist Jeffrey Goldstein provided a current definition of emergence in the journal ''Emergence''. Goldstein initially defined emergence as: "the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems". In 2002 systems scientist
Peter Corning Peter Andrew Corning (born 1935) is an American biologist, consultant, and complex systems scientist, Director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems, in Seattle, Washington. He is known especially for his work on the causal role of ...
described the qualities of Goldstein's definition in more detail:
The common characteristics are: (1) radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems); (2) coherence or correlation (meaning integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time); (3) A global or macro "level" (i.e. there is some property of "wholeness"); (4) it is the product of a dynamical process (it evolves); and (5) it is "ostensive" (it can be perceived).
Corning suggests a narrower definition, requiring that the components be unlike in kind (following Lewes), and that they involve division of labor between these components. He also says that
living systems Living systems are open self-organizing life forms that interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter. In the last few decades, some scientists have proposed that a general living sys ...
(comparably to the game of chess), while emergent, cannot be reduced to underlying laws of emergence:


Strong and weak emergence

Usage of the notion "emergence" may generally be subdivided into two perspectives, that of "weak emergence" and "strong emergence". One paper discussing this division is ''Weak Emergence'', by philosopher
Mark Bedau Mark A. Bedau is an American philosopher who works in the field of artificial life. He is the son of the philosopher Hugo Bedau (1926–2012). Bedau teaches philosophy at Reed College. He is also the co-founder of the European Center for Living ...
. In terms of physical systems, weak emergence is a type of emergence in which the emergent property is amenable to computer simulation or similar forms of after-the-fact analysis (for example, the formation of a traffic jam, the structure of a flock of starlings in flight or a school of fish, or the formation of galaxies). Crucial in these simulations is that the interacting members retain their independence. If not, a new entity is formed with new, emergent properties: this is called strong emergence, which it is argued cannot be simulated or analysed. Some common points between the two notions are that emergence concerns new properties produced as the system grows, which is to say ones which are not shared with its components or prior states. Also, it is assumed that the properties are
supervenient In philosophy, supervenience refers to a relation between sets of properties or sets of facts. X is said to supervene on Y if and only if some difference in Y is necessary for any difference in X to be possible. Some examples include: * Whether t ...
rather than metaphysically primitive. Weak emergence describes new properties arising in systems as a result of the interactions at an elemental level. However, Bedau stipulates that the properties can be determined only by observing or simulating the system, and not by any process of a reductionist analysis. As a consequence the emerging properties are scale dependent: they are only observable if the system is large enough to exhibit the phenomenon. Chaotic, unpredictable behaviour can be seen as an emergent phenomenon, while at a microscopic scale the behaviour of the constituent parts can be fully deterministic. Bedau notes that weak emergence is not a universal metaphysical solvent, as the hypothesis that
consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
is weakly emergent would not resolve the traditional philosophical questions about the physicality of consciousness. However, Bedau concludes that adopting this view would provide a precise notion that emergence is involved in consciousness, and second, the notion of weak emergence is metaphysically benign. Strong emergence describes the direct causal action of a high-level system upon its components; qualities produced this way are irreducible to the system's constituent parts. The whole is other than the sum of its parts. It is argued then that no simulation of the system can exist, for such a simulation would itself constitute a reduction of the system to its constituent parts. Physics lacks well-established examples of strong emergence, unless it is interpreted as the impossibility ''in practice'' to explain the whole in terms of the parts. Practical impossibility may be a more useful distinction than one in principle, since it is easier to determine and quantify, and does not imply the use of mysterious forces, but simply reflects the limits of our capability.


Rejecting the distinction

However, biologist
Peter Corning Peter Andrew Corning (born 1935) is an American biologist, consultant, and complex systems scientist, Director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems, in Seattle, Washington. He is known especially for his work on the causal role of ...
has asserted that "the debate about whether or not the whole can be predicted from the properties of the parts misses the point. Wholes produce unique combined effects, but many of these effects may be co-determined by the context and the interactions between the whole and its environment(s)". In accordance with his Synergism Hypothesis, Corning also stated: "It is the
synergistic Synergy is an interaction or cooperation giving rise to a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts. The term ''synergy'' comes from the Attic Greek word συνεργία ' from ', , meaning "working together". History In Christia ...
effects produced by wholes that are the very cause of the evolution of complexity in nature." Novelist
Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
used the metaphor of Janus (a symbol of the unity underlying complements like open/shut, peace/war) to illustrate how the two perspectives (strong vs. weak or holistic vs.
reductionistic Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical pos ...
) should be treated as non-exclusive, and should work together to address the issues of emergence. Theoretical physicist PW Anderson states it this way:


Viability of strong emergence

Some thinkers question the plausibility of strong emergence as contravening our usual understanding of physics. Mark A. Bedau observes: Strong emergence can be criticized for being causally overdetermined. The canonical example concerns emergent mental states (M and M∗) that supervene on physical states (P and P∗) respectively. Let M and M∗ be emergent properties. Let M∗ supervene on base property P∗. What happens when M causes M∗? Jaegwon Kim says: If M is the cause of M∗, then M∗ is overdetermined because M∗ can also be thought of as being determined by P. One escape-route that a strong emergentist could take would be to deny
downward causation In philosophy, downward causation is a causal relationship from higher levels of a system to lower-level parts of that system: for example, mental events acting to cause physical events. The term was originally coined in 1974 by the philosopher and ...
. However, this would remove the proposed reason that emergent mental states must supervene on physical states, which in turn would call physicalism into question, and thus be unpalatable for some philosophers and physicists. Meanwhile, others have worked towards developing analytical evidence of strong emergence. In 2009, Gu ''et al.'' presented a class of infinite physical systems that exhibits non-computable macroscopic properties. More precisely, if one could compute certain macroscopic properties of these systems from the microscopic description of these systems, then one would be able to solve computational problems known to be undecidable in computer science. These results concern infinite systems, finite systems being considered computable. However, macroscopic concepts which only apply in the limit of infinite systems, such as phase transitions and the
renormalization group In theoretical physics, the term renormalization group (RG) refers to a formal apparatus that allows systematic investigation of the changes of a physical system as viewed at different scales. In particle physics, it reflects the changes in t ...
, are important for understanding and modeling real, finite physical systems. Gu ''et al.'' concluded that


Emergence and interaction

Emergent structures are patterns that emerge via the collective actions of many individual entities. To explain such patterns, one might conclude, per Aristotle, that emergent structures are more than the sum of their parts on the assumption that the emergent order will not arise if the various parts simply act independently of one another. However, there are those who disagree. According to this argument, the interaction of each part with its immediate surroundings causes a complex chain of processes that can lead to order in some form. In fact, some systems in nature are observed to exhibit emergence based upon the interactions of autonomous parts, and some others exhibit emergence that at least at present cannot be reduced in this way. In particular renormalization methods in theoretical physics enable scientists to study systems that are not tractable as the combination of their parts.


Objective or subjective quality

Crutchfield regards the properties of complexity and organization of any system as subjective qualities determined by the observer.
Defining structure and detecting the emergence of complexity in nature are inherently subjective, though essential, scientific activities. Despite the difficulties, these problems can be analysed in terms of how model-building observers infer from measurements the computational capabilities embedded in non-linear processes. An observer’s notion of what is ordered, what is random, and what is complex in its environment depends directly on its computational resources: the amount of raw measurement data, of memory, and of time available for estimation and inference. The discovery of structure in an environment depends more critically and subtly, though, on how those resources are organized. The descriptive power of the observer’s chosen (or implicit) computational model class, for example, can be an overwhelming determinant in finding regularity in data.
On the other hand,
Peter Corning Peter Andrew Corning (born 1935) is an American biologist, consultant, and complex systems scientist, Director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems, in Seattle, Washington. He is known especially for his work on the causal role of ...
argues: "Must the synergies be perceived/observed in order to qualify as emergent effects, as some theorists claim? Most emphatically not. The synergies associated with emergence are real and measurable, even if nobody is there to observe them." The low entropy of an ordered system can be viewed as an example of subjective emergence: the observer sees an ordered system by ignoring the underlying microstructure (i.e. movement of molecules or elementary particles) and concludes that the system has a low entropy. On the other hand, chaotic, unpredictable behaviour can also be seen as subjective emergent, while at a microscopic scale the movement of the constituent parts can be fully deterministic.


In religion, art and humanities

In religion, emergence grounds expressions of
religious naturalism Religious naturalism combines a naturalist worldview with ideals, perceptions, traditions, and values that have been traditionally associated with many religions or religious institutions. "Religious naturalism is a perspective that finds religi ...
and syntheism in which a sense of the sacred is perceived in the workings of entirely naturalistic processes by which more
complex Complex commonly refers to: * Complexity, the behaviour of a system whose components interact in multiple ways so possible interactions are difficult to describe ** Complex system, a system composed of many components which may interact with each ...
forms arise or evolve from simpler forms. Examples are detailed in
The Sacred Emergence of Nature
' by
Ursula Goodenough Ursula W. Goodenough (born March 16, 1943) is a Professor of Biology Emerita at Washington University in St. Louis were she engaged in research on eukaryotic algae. She authored the textbook ''Genetics'' and the best-selling boo''The Sacred Dept ...
& Terrence Deacon an
''Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred''
by
Stuart Kauffman Stuart Alan Kauffman (born September 28, 1939) is an American medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. He was a professor at the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylv ...
, both from 2006, and in ''Syntheism – Creating God in The Internet Age'' by
Alexander Bard Alexander Bengt Magnus Bard (born 17 March 1961) is a Swedish musician, author, lecturer, artist, songwriter, music producer, TV personality, religious and political activist, and one of the founders of the Syntheist religious movement alongside ...
&
Jan Söderqvist Jan Söderqvist (born 1961) is an author, lecturer, writer and consultant, and among other things also working as a literary and film critic for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. Söderqvist has written three books on the Internet revolut ...
from 2014. An early argument (1904–05) for the emergence of social formations, in part stemming from religion, can be found in
Max Weber Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas prof ...
's most famous work, '' The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism''. Recently, the emergence of a new social system is linked with the emergence of order from nonlinear relationships among multiple interacting units, where multiple interacting units are individual thoughts, consciousness, and actions. In art, emergence is used to explore the origins of novelty, creativity, and authorship. Some art/literary theorists (Wheeler, 2006; Alexander, 2011) have proposed alternatives to postmodern understandings of "authorship" using the complexity sciences and emergence theory. They contend that artistic selfhood and meaning are emergent, relatively objective phenomena. Michael J. Pearce has used emergence to describe the experience of works of art in relation to contemporary neuroscience. Practicing artist
Leonel Moura Leonel Moura (born December 26, 1948 in Lisbon, Portugal) is a conceptual artist whose work shifted in the late 1990s from photo based work to Artificial Intelligence and Robotic art. Since then he has produced several Painting Robots and the Robot ...
, in turn, attributes to his "artbots" a real, if nonetheless rudimentary, creativity based on emergent principles. In literature and linguistics, the concept of emergence has been applied in the domain of stylometry to explain the interrelation between the syntactical structures of the text and the author style (Slautina, Marusenko, 2014). In international development, concepts of emergence have been used within a theory of social change termed
SEED-SCALE SEED-SCALE describes a comprehensive theory of social change sometimes also categorized as social development theory. SEED-SCALE can be used both to tell how to implement change and/or it can be used to analyze social change. SEED-SCALE's disting ...
to show how standard principles interact to bring forward socio-economic development fitted to cultural values, community economics, and natural environment (local solutions emerging from the larger socio-econo-biosphere). These principles can be implemented utilizing a sequence of standardized tasks that
self-assemble Self-assembly is a process in which a disordered system of pre-existing components forms an organized structure or pattern as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves, without external direction. When the ...
in individually specific ways utilizing recursive evaluative criteria. In postcolonial studies, the term "Emerging Literature" refers to a contemporary body of texts that is gaining momentum in the global literary landscape (v. esp.: J.M. Grassin, ed. ''Emerging Literatures'', Bern, Berlin, etc. : Peter Lang, 1996). By opposition, "emergent literature" is rather a concept used in the theory of literature.


Emergent properties and processes

An emergent behavior or emergent property can appear when a number of simple
entities An entity is something that exists as itself, as a subject or as an object, actually or potentially, concretely or abstractly, physically or not. It need not be of material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually re ...
(agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective. If emergence happens over disparate size scales, then the reason is usually a causal relation across different scales. In other words, there is often a form of top-down feedback in systems with emergent properties. The processes causing emergent properties may occur in either the observed or observing system, and are commonly identifiable by their patterns of accumulating change, generally called 'growth'. Emergent behaviours can occur because of intricate causal relations across different scales and feedback, known as
interconnectivity In telecommunications, interconnection is the physical linking of a carrier's network with equipment or facilities not belonging to that network. The term may refer to a connection between a carrier's facilities and the equipment belonging to ...
. The emergent property itself may be either very predictable or unpredictable and unprecedented, and represent a new level of the system's evolution. The complex behaviour or properties are not a property of any single such entity, nor can they easily be predicted or deduced from behaviour in the lower-level entities. The shape and behaviour of a flock of birds or school of fish are good examples of emergent properties. One reason emergent behaviour is hard to predict is that the number of interactions between a system's components increases exponentially with the number of components, thus allowing for many new and subtle types of behaviour to emerge. Emergence is often a product of particular patterns of interaction.
Negative feedback Negative feedback (or balancing feedback) occurs when some function of the output of a system, process, or mechanism is fed back in a manner that tends to reduce the fluctuations in the output, whether caused by changes in the input or by othe ...
introduces constraints that serve to fix structures or behaviours. In contrast, positive feedback promotes change, allowing local variations to grow into global patterns. Another way in which interactions lead to emergent properties is dual-phase evolution. This occurs where interactions are applied intermittently, leading to two phases: one in which patterns form or grow, the other in which they are refined or removed. On the other hand, merely having a large number of interactions is not enough by itself to guarantee emergent behaviour; many of the interactions may be negligible or irrelevant, or may cancel each other out. In some cases, a large number of interactions can in fact hinder the emergence of interesting behaviour, by creating a lot of "noise" to drown out any emerging "signal"; the emergent behaviour may need to be temporarily isolated from other interactions before it reaches enough critical mass to self-support. Thus it is not just the sheer number of connections between components which encourages emergence; it is also how these connections are organised. A hierarchical organisation is one example that can generate emergent behaviour (a bureaucracy may behave in a way quite different from the individual departments of that bureaucracy); but emergent behaviour can also arise from more decentralized organisational structures, such as a marketplace. In some cases, the system has to reach a combined threshold of diversity, organisation, and connectivity before emergent behaviour appears.
Unintended consequence In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by Ameri ...
s and side effects are closely related to emergent properties.
Luc Steels Luc Steels (born in 1952) is a Belgian scientist and artist. Steels is considered a pioneer of Artificial Intelligence in Europe who has made contributions to expert systems, behavior-based robotics, artificial life and evolutionary computationa ...
writes: "A component has a particular functionality but this is not recognizable as a subfunction of the global functionality. Instead a component implements a behaviour whose side effect contributes to the global functionality ... Each behaviour has a side effect and the sum of the side effects gives the desired functionality." In other words, the global or macroscopic functionality of a system with "emergent functionality" is the sum of all "side effects", of all emergent properties and functionalities. Systems with emergent properties or emergent structures may appear to defy
entropic Entropy is a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property, that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynam ...
principles and the second law of thermodynamics, because they form and increase order despite the lack of command and central control. This is possible because open systems can extract information and order out of the environment. Emergence helps to explain why the
fallacy of division A fallacy of division is an informal fallacy that occurs when one reasons that something that is true for a whole must also be true of all or some of its parts. An example: # The second grade in Jefferson Elementary eats a lot of ice cream # Ca ...
is a fallacy.


Emergent structures in nature

Emergent structures can be found in many natural phenomena, from the physical to the biological domain. For example, the shape of weather phenomena such as
hurricane A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...
s are emergent structures. The development and growth of complex, orderly crystals, as driven by the random motion of water molecules within a conducive natural environment, is another example of an emergent process, where randomness can give rise to complex and deeply attractive, orderly structures. However, crystalline structure and hurricanes are said to have a self-organizing phase. It is useful to distinguish three forms of emergent structures. A ''first-order'' emergent structure occurs as a result of shape interactions (for example, hydrogen bonds in water molecules lead to
surface tension Surface tension is the tendency of liquid surfaces at rest to shrink into the minimum surface area possible. Surface tension is what allows objects with a higher density than water such as razor blades and insects (e.g. water striders) to ...
). A ''second-order'' emergent structure involves shape interactions played out sequentially over time (for example, changing atmospheric conditions as a snowflake falls to the ground build upon and alter its form). Finally, a ''third-order'' emergent structure is a consequence of shape, time, and heritable instructions. For example, an organism's
genetic code The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material ( DNA or RNA sequences of nucleotide triplets, or codons) into proteins. Translation is accomplished by the ribosome, which links ...
affects the form of the organism's systems in space and time.


Nonliving, physical systems

In physics, emergence is used to describe a property, law, or phenomenon which occurs at macroscopic scales (in space or time) but not at microscopic scales, despite the fact that a macroscopic system can be viewed as a very large ensemble of microscopic systems. An emergent property need not be more complicated than the underlying non-emergent properties which generate it. For instance, the laws of thermodynamics are remarkably simple, even if the laws which govern the interactions between component particles are complex. The term emergence in physics is thus used not to signify complexity, but rather to distinguish which laws and concepts apply to macroscopic scales, and which ones apply to microscopic scales. However, another, perhaps more broadly applicable way to conceive of the emergent divide does involve a dose of complexity insofar as the computational feasibility of going from the microscopic to the macroscopic property tells the 'strength' of the emergence. This is better understood given the following definition of (''weak'') emergence that comes from physics:
An emergent behavior of a physical system is a qualitative property that can only occur in the limit that the number of microscopic constituents tends to infinity.
Since there are no actually infinite systems in the real world, there is no obvious naturally occurring notion of a hard separation between the properties of the constituents of a system and those of the emergent whole. As discussed below, classical mechanics is thought to be emergent from quantum mechanics, though in principle, quantum dynamics fully describes everything happening at a classical level. However, it would take a computer larger than the size of the universe with more computing time than life time of the universe to describe the motion of a falling apple in terms of the locations of its electrons ; thus we can take this to be a "strong" emergent divide. In the case of ''strong'' emergence, the number of constituents can be much smaller. F.i. the emergent properties of a H2O molecule are very different from its constituent parts oxygen and hydrogen. Some examples include: ;
Classical mechanics Classical mechanics is a physical theory describing the motion of macroscopic objects, from projectiles to parts of machinery, and astronomical objects, such as spacecraft, planets, stars, and galaxies. For objects governed by classical m ...
: The laws of classical mechanics can be said to emerge as a limiting case from the rules of quantum mechanics applied to large enough masses. This is particularly strange since quantum mechanics is generally thought of as ''more'' complicated than classical mechanics. ; Friction : Forces between elementary particles are conservative. However, friction emerges when considering more complex structures of matter, whose surfaces can convert mechanical energy into heat energy when rubbed against each other. Similar considerations apply to other emergent concepts in
continuum mechanics Continuum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that deals with the mechanical behavior of materials modeled as a continuous mass rather than as discrete particles. The French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy was the first to formulate such m ...
such as viscosity, elasticity, tensile strength, etc. ; Patterned ground : the distinct, and often symmetrical geometric shapes formed by ground material in periglacial regions. ;
Statistical mechanics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. It does not assume or postulate any natural laws, but explains the macroscopic be ...
: initially derived using the concept of a large enough ensemble that fluctuations about the most likely distribution can be all but ignored. However, small clusters do not exhibit sharp first order phase transitions such as melting, and at the boundary it is not possible to completely categorize the cluster as a liquid or solid, since these concepts are (without extra definitions) only applicable to macroscopic systems. Describing a system using statistical mechanics methods is much simpler than using a low-level atomistic approach. ; Electrical networks : The bulk conductive response of binary (RC) electrical networks with random arrangements, known as the Universal Dielectric Response (UDR), can be seen as emergent properties of such physical systems. Such arrangements can be used as simple physical prototypes for deriving mathematical formulae for the emergent responses of complex systems. ;
Weather Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmosphere, the t ...
: Temperature is sometimes used as an example of an emergent macroscopic behaviour. In classical dynamics, a ''snapshot'' of the instantaneous momenta of a large number of particles at equilibrium is sufficient to find the average kinetic energy per degree of freedom which is proportional to the temperature. For a small number of particles the instantaneous momenta at a given time are not statistically sufficient to determine the temperature of the system. However, using the ergodic hypothesis, the temperature can still be obtained to arbitrary precision by further averaging the momenta over a long enough time. ;
Convection Convection is single or multiphase fluid flow that occurs spontaneously due to the combined effects of material property heterogeneity and body forces on a fluid, most commonly density and gravity (see buoyancy). When the cause of the convecti ...
:in a liquid or gas is another example of emergent macroscopic behaviour that makes sense only when considering differentials of temperature. Convection cells, particularly
Bénard cells Benard or Bénard is a surname or given name. Notable people with the name include: Surname * Abraham-Joseph Bénard (1750–1822), French actor of the Comédie-Française * Aimé Bénard (1873–1938), Canadian politician * Alexander Benard, Am ...
, are an example of a self-organizing system (more specifically, a dissipative system) whose structure is determined both by the constraints of the system and by random perturbations: the possible realizations of the shape and size of the cells depends on the temperature gradient as well as the nature of the fluid and shape of the container, but which configurations are actually realized is due to random perturbations (thus these systems exhibit a form of
symmetry breaking In physics, symmetry breaking is a phenomenon in which (infinitesimally) small fluctuations acting on a system crossing a critical point decide the system's fate, by determining which branch of a bifurcation is taken. To an outside observ ...
). In some theories of particle physics, even such basic structures as mass, space, and time are viewed as emergent phenomena, arising from more fundamental concepts such as the Higgs boson or strings. In some interpretations of quantum mechanics, the perception of a deterministic reality, in which all objects have a definite position, momentum, and so forth, is actually an emergent phenomenon, with the true state of matter being described instead by a wavefunction which need not have a single position or momentum. Most of the laws of physics themselves as we experience them today appear to have emerged during the course of time making emergence the most fundamental principle in the universe and raising the question of what might be the most fundamental law of physics from which all others emerged. Chemistry can in turn be viewed as an emergent property of the laws of physics.
Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...
(including biological evolution) can be viewed as an emergent property of the laws of chemistry. Similarly, psychology could be understood as an emergent property of neurobiological laws. Finally, some economic theories understand economy as an emergent feature of psychology. According to Laughlin, for many particle systems, nothing can be calculated exactly from the microscopic equations, and macroscopic systems are characterised by broken symmetry: the symmetry present in the microscopic equations is not present in the macroscopic system, due to phase transitions. As a result, these macroscopic systems are described in their own terminology, and have properties that do not depend on many microscopic details. This does not mean that the microscopic interactions are irrelevant, but simply that you do not see them anymore — you only see a renormalized effect of them. Laughlin is a pragmatic theoretical physicist: if you cannot, possibly ever, calculate the broken symmetry macroscopic properties from the microscopic equations, then what is the point of talking about reducibility?


Living, biological systems


Emergence and evolution

Life is a major source of complexity, and evolution is the major process behind the varying forms of life. In this view, evolution is the process describing the growth of complexity in the natural world and in speaking of the emergence of complex living beings and life-forms. Life is thought to have emerged in the early
RNA world The RNA world is a hypothetical stage in the evolutionary history of life on Earth, in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated before the evolution of DNA and proteins. The term also refers to the hypothesis that posits the existence ...
when RNA chains began to express the basic conditions necessary for natural selection to operate as conceived by Darwin: heritability, variation of type, and competition for limited resources. Fitness of an RNA replicator (its per capita rate of increase) would likely be a function of adaptive capacities that were intrinsic (in the sense that they were determined by the nucleotide sequence) and the availability of resources.Michod RE. (2000) Darwinian Dynamics: Evolutionary Transitions in Fitness and Individuality. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey The three primary adaptive capacities may have been (1) the capacity to replicate with moderate fidelity (giving rise to both heritability and variation of type); (2) the capacity to avoid decay; and (3) the capacity to acquire and process resources. These capacities would have been determined initially by the folded configurations of the RNA replicators (see " Ribozyme") that, in turn, would be encoded in their individual nucleotide sequences. Competitive success among different replicators would have depended on the relative values of these adaptive capacities. Regarding
causality Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the ca ...
in evolution
Peter Corning Peter Andrew Corning (born 1935) is an American biologist, consultant, and complex systems scientist, Director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems, in Seattle, Washington. He is known especially for his work on the causal role of ...
observes:
Synergistic effects of various kinds have played a major causal role in the evolutionary process generally and in the evolution of cooperation and complexity in particular... Natural selection is often portrayed as a "mechanism", or is personified as a causal agency... In reality, the differential "selection" of a trait, or an adaptation, is a consequence of the functional effects it produces in relation to the survival and reproductive success of a given organism in a given environment. It is these functional effects that are ultimately responsible for the trans-generational continuities and changes in nature.
Per his definition of emergence, Corning also addresses emergence and evolution:
nevolutionary processes, causation is iterative; effects are also causes. And this is equally true of the synergistic effects produced by emergent systems. In other words, emergence itself... has been the underlying cause of the evolution of emergent phenomena in biological evolution; it is the synergies produced by organized systems that are the key
Swarming is a well-known behaviour in many animal species from marching locusts to schooling fish to flocking birds. Emergent structures are a common strategy found in many animal groups: colonies of ants, mounds built by termites, swarms of bees, shoals/schools of fish, flocks of birds, and herds/packs of mammals. An example to consider in detail is an
ant colony An ant colony is a population of a single ant species capable to maintain its complete lifecycle. Ant colonies are eusocial, communal, and efficiently organized and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the vario ...
. The queen does not give direct orders and does not tell the ants what to do. Instead, each ant reacts to stimuli in the form of chemical scent from larvae, other ants, intruders, food and buildup of waste, and leaves behind a chemical trail, which, in turn, provides a stimulus to other ants. Here each ant is an autonomous unit that reacts depending only on its local environment and the genetically encoded rules for its variety of ant. Despite the lack of centralized decision making, ant colonies exhibit complex behavior and have even demonstrated the ability to solve geometric problems. For example, colonies routinely find the maximum distance from all colony entrances to dispose of dead bodies. It appears that environmental factors may play a role in influencing emergence. Research suggests induced emergence of the bee species Macrotera portalis. In this species, the bees emerge in a pattern consistent with rainfall. Specifically, the pattern of emergence is consistent with southwestern deserts' late summer rains and lack of activity in the spring.


Organization of life

A broader example of emergent properties in biology is viewed in the
biological organisation Biological organisation is the hierarchy of complex biological structures and systems that define life using a reductionistic approach. The traditional hierarchy, as detailed below, extends from atoms to biospheres. The higher levels of this s ...
of life, ranging from the subatomic level to the entire
biosphere The biosphere (from Greek βίος ''bíos'' "life" and σφαῖρα ''sphaira'' "sphere"), also known as the ecosphere (from Greek οἶκος ''oîkos'' "environment" and σφαῖρα), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be ...
. For example, individual atoms can be combined to form molecules such as polypeptide chains, which in turn fold and refold to form proteins, which in turn create even more complex structures. These proteins, assuming their functional status from their spatial conformation, interact together and with other molecules to achieve higher biological functions and eventually create an organism. Another example is how cascade phenotype reactions, as detailed in
chaos theory Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have ...
, arise from individual genes mutating respective positioning. At the highest level, all the biological communities in the world form the biosphere, where its human participants form societies, and the complex interactions of meta-social systems.


Emergence of mind

Among the considered phenomena in the evolutionary account of life, as a continuous history, marked by stages at which fundamentally new forms have appeared – the origin of sapiens intelligence. The emergence of mind and its evolution is researched and considered as a separate phenomenon in a special system knowledge called noogenesis.


In humanity


Spontaneous order

Groups of human beings, left free to each regulate themselves, tend to produce spontaneous order, rather than the meaningless chaos often feared. This has been observed in society at least since Chuang Tzu in
ancient China The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the reign of king Wu Ding. Ancient historical texts such as the ''Book of Documents'' (early chapter ...
. Human beings are the basic elements of social systems, which perpetually interact and create, maintain, or untangle mutual social bonds. Social bonds in social systems are perpetually changing in the sense of the ongoing reconfiguration of their structure. A classic traffic roundabout is also a good example, with cars moving in and out with such effective organization that some modern cities have begun replacing stoplights at problem intersections with roundabouts, and getting better results. Open-source software and Wiki projects form an even more compelling illustration. Emergent processes or behaviors can be seen in many other places, such as cities,
cabal A cabal is a group of people who are united in some close design, usually to promote their private views or interests in an ideology, a state, or another community, often by intrigue and usually unbeknownst to those who are outside their group. T ...
and market-dominant minority phenomena in economics, organizational phenomena in
computer simulation Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be deter ...
s and
cellular automata A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessel ...
. Whenever there is a multitude of individuals interacting, an order emerges from disorder; a pattern, a decision, a structure, or a change in direction occurs.


Economics

The stock market (or any market for that matter) is an example of emergence on a grand scale. As a whole it precisely regulates the relative security prices of companies across the world, yet it has no leader; when no
central planning A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, parti ...
is in place, there is no one entity which controls the workings of the entire market. Agents, or
investors An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some species of property. Typ ...
, have knowledge of only a limited number of companies within their portfolio, and must follow the regulatory rules of the market and analyse the transactions individually or in large groupings. Trends and patterns which emerge are studied intensively by technical analysts.


World Wide Web and the Internet

The
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
is a popular example of a decentralized system exhibiting emergent properties. There is no central organization rationing the number of links, yet the number of links pointing to each page follows a power law in which a few pages are linked to many times and most pages are seldom linked to. A related property of the network of links in the World Wide Web is that almost any pair of pages can be connected to each other through a relatively short chain of links. Although relatively well known now, this property was initially unexpected in an unregulated network. It is shared with many other types of networks called small-world networks. Internet traffic can also exhibit some seemingly emergent properties. In the congestion control mechanism, TCP flows can become globally synchronized at bottlenecks, simultaneously increasing and then decreasing throughput in coordination. Congestion, widely regarded as a nuisance, is possibly an emergent property of the spreading of bottlenecks across a network in high traffic flows which can be considered as a phase transition. Another important example of emergence in web-based systems is social bookmarking (also called collaborative tagging). In social bookmarking systems, users assign tags to resources shared with other users, which gives rise to a type of information organisation that emerges from this crowdsourcing process. Recent research which analyzes empirically the complex dynamics of such systemsValentin Robu, Harry Halpin, Hana Shepher
Emergence of consensus and shared vocabularies in collaborative tagging systems
ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB), Vol. 3(4), article 14, ACM Press, September 2009.
has shown that consensus on stable distributions and a simple form of shared vocabularies does indeed emerge, even in the absence of a central controlled vocabulary. Some believe that this could be because users who contribute tags all use the same language, and they share similar semantic structures underlying the choice of words. The convergence in social tags may therefore be interpreted as the emergence of structures as people who have similar semantic interpretation collaboratively index online information, a process called semantic imitation.


Architecture and cities

Emergent structures appear at many different levels of organization or as spontaneous order. Emergent self-organization appears frequently in
cities A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be de ...
where no planning or zoning entity predetermines the layout of the city. The interdisciplinary study of emergent behaviors is not generally considered a homogeneous field, but divided across its application or problem domains. Architects may not design all the pathways of a complex of buildings. Instead they might let usage patterns emerge and then place pavement where pathways have become worn, such as a desire path. The on-course action and vehicle progression of the 2007 Urban Challenge could possibly be regarded as an example of
cybernetic Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson ma ...
emergence. Patterns of road use, indeterministic obstacle clearance times, etc. will work together to form a complex emergent pattern that can not be deterministically planned in advance. The architectural school of
Christopher Alexander Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and design theorist. He was an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His theories about the nature ...
takes a deeper approach to emergence, attempting to rewrite the process of urban growth itself in order to affect form, establishing a new methodology of planning and design tied to traditional practices, a
Emergent Urbanism
Urban emergence has also been linked to theories of urban complexity and urban evolution. Building ecology is a conceptual framework for understanding architecture and the built environment as the interface between the dynamically interdependent elements of buildings, their occupants, and the larger environment. Rather than viewing buildings as inanimate or static objects, building ecologist Hal Levin views them as interfaces or intersecting domains of living and non-living systems. The microbial ecology of the indoor environment is strongly dependent on the building materials, occupants, contents, environmental context and the indoor and outdoor climate. The strong relationship between atmospheric chemistry and indoor air quality and the chemical reactions occurring indoors. The chemicals may be nutrients, neutral or biocides for the microbial organisms. The microbes produce chemicals that affect the building materials and occupant health and well-being. Humans manipulate the ventilation, temperature and humidity to achieve comfort with the concomitant effects on the microbes that populate and evolve. Eric Bonabeau's attempt to define emergent phenomena is through traffic: "traffic jams are actually very complicated and mysterious. On an individual level, each driver is trying to get somewhere and is following (or breaking) certain rules, some legal (the speed limit) and others societal or personal (slow down to let another driver change into your lane). But a traffic jam is a separate and distinct entity that emerges from those individual behaviors.
Gridlock Gridlock is a form of traffic congestion where "continuous queues of vehicles block an entire network of intersecting streets, bringing traffic in all directions to a complete standstill". The term originates from a situation possible in a grid ...
on a highway, for example, can travel backward for no apparent reason, even as the cars are moving forward." He has also likened emergent phenomena to the analysis of market trends and employee behavior.


Computer AI

Some artificially intelligent (AI) computer applications simulate emergent behavior. One example is Boids, which mimics the swarming behavior of birds.


Language

It has been argued that the structure and regularity of language grammar, or at least language change, is an emergent phenomenon. While each speaker merely tries to reach their own communicative goals, they use language in a particular way. If enough speakers behave in that way, language is changed. In a wider sense, the norms of a language, i.e. the linguistic conventions of its speech society, can be seen as a system emerging from long-time participation in communicative problem-solving in various social circumstances.


Emergent change processes

Within the field of group facilitation and organization development, there have been a number of new group processes that are designed to maximize emergence and self-organization, by offering a minimal set of effective initial conditions. Examples of these processes include
SEED-SCALE SEED-SCALE describes a comprehensive theory of social change sometimes also categorized as social development theory. SEED-SCALE can be used both to tell how to implement change and/or it can be used to analyze social change. SEED-SCALE's disting ...
,
appreciative inquiry Appreciative inquiry (AI) is a model that seeks to engage stakeholders in self-determined change. According to Gervase Bushe, professor of leadership and organization development at the Beedie School of Business and a researcher on the topic, "A ...
, Future Search, the world cafe or
knowledge cafe Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...
,
Open Space Technology Open Space Technology (OST) is a method for organizing and running a meeting or multi-day conference, where participants have been invited in order to focus on a specific, important task or purpose. In contrast with pre-planned conferences where ...
, and others (Holman, 2010).


See also

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References


Bibliography

* * * * * Bejan, Adrian; Zane, J. P. (2012). ''Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organizations''. Doubleday. * * * * * * *


Further reading

* Alexander, V. N. (2011). ''The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature and Nature''. Litchfield Park AZ: Emergent Publications. * * * * Chalmers, David J. (2002). "Strong and Weak Emergence" http://consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf Republished in P. Clayton and P. Davies, eds. (2006) ''The Re-Emergence of Emergence''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Philip Clayton &
Paul Davies Paul Charles William Davies (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, a professor in Arizona State University and Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He is affiliated with the Institu ...
(eds.) (2006). ''The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion'' Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Felipe Cucker and Stephen Smale (2007), The Japanese Journal of Mathematics
''The Mathematics of Emergence''
* * * Hoffmann, Peter M. "Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos" (2012), Basic Books. * * * * * * * * * Ignazio Licata & Ammar Sakaji (eds) (2008)
''Physics of Emergence and Organization''
, World Scientific and Imperial College Press. * * * * * * * Solé, Ricard and Goodwin, Brian (2000) Signs of life: how complexity pervades biology, Basic Books, New York * Jakub Tkac
Jiri Kroc
(2017), Cellular Automaton Simulation of Dynamic Recrystallization: Introduction into Self-Organization and Emergence (Software
"Video - Simulation of DRX"
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* *


External links

* * * *
The Emergent Universe
An interactive introduction to emergent phenomena, from ant colonies to Alzheimer's.
Exploring Emergence
An introduction to emergence using Cellular automaton, CA and
Conway's Game of Life The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further ...
from the MIT Media Lab
ISCE group
Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence.
Towards modeling of emergence
lecture slides from Helsinki University of Technology
Biomimetic Architecture – Emergence applied to building and construction

Studies in Emergent Order
Studies in Emergent Order (SIEO) is an open-access journal


Emergence – How Stupid Things Become Smart Together
YouTube video by
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell Kurzgesagt (; German for "In a nutshell" or "in a few words") is a German-made animation and design studio founded by Philipp Dettmer. The studio's YouTube channel focuses on minimalist animated educational content, using the flat and 3D design ...

DIEP
Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena {{Cybernetics Chaos theory Complex systems theory Concepts in epistemology Concepts in metaphysics Consciousness–matter dualism Metaphysics of mind Metaphysics of science Pattern formation