The Emergence of Emergence....
SWC member Zenpundit on Emergence - quite possibly the thing that keeps doctrine writers up at night....
Quote:
Briefly, emergence is the phenomenon of a new, unanticipated, spontaneous behavior as a result of a system reaching a particular point of complexity. Usually the constituent components of the system lack the capacity for the emergent behavior until the collective has formed a pattern of interaction. If the emergent pattern- say for example the formation of a scale-free network - possesses the characteristics of resilience, it will stabilize as a recognizable and observable entity or phenomenon. The implications of emergence in systems are strongly Darwininan and quite naturally have immediate applications for such fields as physics and economics but would apply to virtually everything and as such, is a consilient concept.
