Jump to content

Emergence

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The formation of snowflakes is an example of emergence

In philosophy, science, systems theory, and art, emergence happens when something new appears from a system. The parts that make up the system do not have the new behavior. The new behavior only happen when the parts work together as a whole.[1][2][3]

Emergence is an important idea in the study of complex systems. For example, life is an emergent property. The parts of a living thing (like atoms and molecules) are not alive. But, when they work together in the right way, life appears.[1][3]

The idea of emergence came from John Stuart Mill in 1843. There is still a lot of debates on emergence. In philosophy, ideas about emergence are called emergentism.[2][4]

In systems biology, scientists study how new complex things can emerge in living things. A good example are termite mounds or beehives. Many insects work together to build them. No single insect controls everybody or plans it all. Other examples of emergence in biology include life, flocking, and consciousness.[1]

In philosophy

[change | change source]

Philosophers often say that emergence explains how new behaviors can appear in a system. An emergent property is something the whole system has, but the parts by themselves do not have it. It only appears when the parts come together in a certain way. For example, a car can move. But none of the car’s parts like the wheels or engine can move on their own.

A philosopher named Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950) was one of the first to write about emergence. He called an emergent property a "categorial novum", which means a new kind of thing that did not exist in the parts.[5]

Definition

[change | change source]

The idea of emergence has been around for a long time. Even Aristotle talked about it. Many later thinkers also wrote about it. This includes John Stuart Mill in 1843 and Julian Huxley in the 1900s.[6]

The word "emergent" was first used in this way by the philosopher G. H. Lewes in 1875. He said there is a difference between resultants and emergents.[6]

A resultant is something that you can understand by adding or subtracting its parts. For example, two people push a box in the same direction. The box moves faster. The total force is just both pushes added together. You can understand resultants by looking at the parts.[7]

An emergent, on the other hand, is something new that happens when different kinds of things work together. You cannot understand it by looking at the parts alone.[7]

Weak and strong emergence

[change | change source]

There are two types of emergence. They are weak and strong emergence.

In weak emergence, new things or behaviors can appear when simple parts work together. But, you can explain these new things by looking at the parts and how they interact. If we study the whole system carefully, we can understand how the new behavior happens.[8][9]

A flock of starlings

A good example of weak emergence is a flock of birds. Each bird follows a few simple rules like stay close to nearby birds, don’t crash into them, and move the same way. No bird is the leader. None of them knows what the whole group is doing. But when many birds follow these rules at the same time, the flock moves together well. This is weak emergence. We can tell how the flock will move if we understand the rules each bird is following and what is happening around them.[8][9]

These new behaviors depend on how big the system is. They only show up when the system is big enough. For example, chaotic and unpredictable behavior can happen in large systems, even if the small parts behave in a simple and predictable way.[9]

In strong emergence, new things or behaviors can appear when simple parts work together. But, you cannot explain them by looking at the parts and how they interact. Even if we study the whole system carefully, we cannot understand how the new behavior happens. But some people think that with better technology and more time, we can understand them.[8]

For example, think of the 86 billion neurons in your brain. Each neuron follows simple rules. It receives a message, processes it, and sends it out. On their own, neurons are simple. But when they all work together, you become conscious. You know you exist. You feel emotions, imagine the future, create art, think about the past, and wonder why you are alive. A single neuron cannot do any of this.[8]

Some philosophers say that even if you studied your entire brain in a lab, you still might not be able to explain consciousness. If this is true, it is strongly emergent. Others disagree. They think that science will be able to explain it one day using better technology and more time.[8]

Debates on strong emergence

[change | change source]

Some philosophers think strong emergence does not make sense. It seems to go against how we usually understand physics. Philosopher Mark A. Bedau explains that although strong emergence seems possible, it is feels like magic. How can a new thing come from smaller parts that work together, if it can’t be explained by them? It feels like getting something from nothing. Many scientists and philosophers don't like this.[9]

People argue that strong emergence is not real. So far, we can study complex things by looking at their parts. It is just very hard. They believe that we can explain anything by studying its parts. It may be too complex or we don't have the right technology yet. But, you can still explain the whole system by looking at the parts.[8]

Some philosophers say strong emergence causes a problem called causal overdetermination. This means that something might be caused by two different things at the same time.[10] For example, a thought that goes “I want to move my hand,” might cause a person to move their hand. It seems like the thought caused the person to move their hand. But there’s a problem. The brain sends a message to the body to move the hand. That means the brain and the thought caused the hand to move. This is called causal overdetermination. People argue that it doesn't make sense for two things to cause one thing. Some people argue that the brain causes the hand to move. The thought doesn't do anything.[10]

Many scientists and philosophers believe in physicalism.[11] If they accepted that thoughts or consciousness could affect physical things, that would break the rules of physics. We could say that higher-level things, like thoughts, don't actually do anything to the physical world. This is called denying downward causation.[12]

But, there is a problem. Our conscious experience seems to have effects. For example, feeling pain causes us to avoid the thing that was hurting us. If we say that thoughts and consciousness don't do anything, then we have to say your brain made you avoid pain. You feeling pain had nothing to do with you avoiding pain. This also leads to epiphenomenalism. The idea that consciousness is real but does nothing.[13] But, we believe we make choices, think through problems, and act because of our thoughts. Denying downward causation says all that is an illusion.[14]

There isn't a rule that makes overdetermination impossible. Philosophers prefer to keep things as simple as possible. If one cause already explains everything, the second cause just feels unnecessary.[15][16]

Carroll and Parola's Types of Emergence

[change | change source]

Carroll and Parola suggested a way to sort different types of emergence based on how the entire system relates to the parts of the system and how they work together.[17]

Type-0: Featureless emergence

[change | change source]

Type‑0 or Featureless Emergence is the simplest type of emergence. It happens when you zoom out from the parts of a system to look at the big picture or the whole system. You don't need to break the system into smaller parts to understand it. The big picture changes over time the same way the parts change.[17]

For example, take a gas. The gas is made up of molecules. All molecules in the gas move around with lots of different speeds. If you zoom out, you can describe the gas using temperature. This is the average of all the different speeds of the gas molecules. Temperature emerges from all the gas molecules moving around. The temperature changes over time in same way the movements of the gas molecules change. For example, if temperature increases that means the gas molecules are moving faster. If temperature decreases, the gas molecules are moving slower.[18]

Type-1: Local emergence

[change | change source]

Type-1 or Local Emergence is the second type of emergence. This kind of emergence happens when the whole system comes from groups of smaller parts working together in local areas like tiny regions or neighborhoods in the system. By understanding how small groups of parts behave, you can understand how the entire system works. There are two types of Type‑1 emergence.[17]

Type‑1a: Direct Emergence

[change | change source]

Type-1a or Direct Emergence is the first type of Type-1 emergence. Here, you can easily understand the whole system from the small parts. By understanding the local small parts, you can easily predict the behavior of the system.[17]

Crystals are a good example. Atoms in a crystal follow certain rules when bonding to each other. From these rules, large, repeating patterns are formed, like cubes or other shapes. Scientists can understand what the crystals will look like without needing to look at every single atom.[19][20]

Type‑1b: Incompressible Emergence

[change | change source]

Type-1b or Incompressible Emergence is the second type of Type-1 emergence. Here, you cannot easily understand the whole system from the parts. The whole system still comes from the small parts working together, but you can't tell what will happen by studying the parts.[17]

For example, Conway's Game of Life. Conway's game of Life is an algorithm that follows simple rules. But even by understanding those rules, you cannot predict what it would look like.[21]

Type-2: Nonlocal emergence

[change | change source]

Type‑2 or Non-local Emergence happens when the behavior of the system comes from parts all over the system work together. You cannot understand the whole system by looking at how parts close to each other interact. The behavior of the entire system depends on parts in different parts of the system.[17]

One clear example of Type-2 emergence is weather systems. In weather, small changes in stuff like wind, pressure, or temperatures in different places can change entire weather patterns. The behavior of a weather system like a storm, hurricane, or wind currents can't be fully predicted just by looking at parts of the system. Even if you understand one small part of a weather system, you won’t fully understand the how the entire system will act without with understanding how that one small part interact with parts farther away.[22]

Type‑3: Augmented Emergence

[change | change source]

Type-3 or Augmented Emergence is the last kind of emergence. In this type, you can't explain how the whole system acts just by looking at the parts. Here something new truly appears in the whole system that you can’t predict or explain just by looking at the little parts that make up the system.[17]

For example, (probably) consciousness. No individual neuron is conscious. It is an emergent property of the brain and nervous system. Billions of neurons interact in very complex ways and a new thing appears that cannot be fully explained by the behavior of any single neuron or even a group of neurons. Though this is controversial.[14]

Type-3 emergence suggests that new laws, forces, or things appear from the various parts of the system but you can't explain it using the various parts of the system. For some, it doesn't make sense. A lot of scientists and philosophers find it hard to accept. It challenges the idea that everything can be explained from its parts.[23][24]

Scales: Big & Small

[change | change source]

Things can happen at different scales. The small scale or the large scale. For example, at the tiny scale, the atoms in a gas can be seen moving around. But, at the large scale, different words like temperature and pressure are used to talk about the system. This makes sense. You cannot talk about a large container of gas by talking about what the atoms are doing. Likewise at the tiny scale, there is no hot or cold, just molecules moving around. These small and large scales are actually connected.[25]

At the small scale in a traffic system, there are individual vehicles. Each driver reacts to traffic. They slow down, speed up, or change lanes depending on what's happening around them. These individual actions from a lot of drivers change the way traffic flows. At the large scale, there are things that control traffic, like traffic lights. They watch the overall traffic and make changes to keep traffic flowing smoothly and prevent traffic jams or accidents. Drivers affect the traffic system through how they drive. Traffic systems like traffic lights watch the traffic and makes changes that affect the drivers. This creates a feedback loop between individual drivers and the entire system.[26]

In meteorology, scientists study weather at different scales. Microscale or small scale (less than 1 km). Mesoscale or large scale (5 to 1000 km). Synoptic scale or very large scale (over 1000 km).[27]

When scientists simulate complex systems like weather, they don’t just calculate the movements of every tiny atom. Instead, they look at things in the entire system, like pressure, or temperature that emerge from all those tiny parts working together. Those large-scale patterns also affect how the tiny parts behave. For example, the temperature in a system can affect how fast atoms move. So there’s a connection between the entire system and the small parts. In simulations, scientists use this simplify things. They do not do the math for everything in the system by starting small (like molecules). They let large-scale behavior guide and update the small-scale behavior and vice versa. This makes the simulation much faster and more efficient. One might say the connections between the entire system and the parts we use when simulating a system might be how nature works.[28][29]

Time scales matter too. Whether a short time or long time. For example, a hurricane is made in a few days, but the sea temperatures, pressures and other things that helped make the hurricane took months or years to build up.[30]

Objective or subjective quality

[change | change source]

An American mathematician and physicist named James P. Crutchfield talked about emergence. He said how complex or organized a system is depends on how you look at the system. He says understanding a system and finding emergence all depends on how you look at the system. Crutchfield explains that what you see, like order, randomness, or complexity depends on your resources. How much data you have, how powerful your computers are, and how much time you have to think or analyze. Even more important than your tools is how you use them. The way you look at the data affects what you are able to see in the system.[31]

The entropy of a system can be seen as an example of subjective emergence. A person can see order in a system by ignoring the messy movement of molecules. He would then say that the system has a low entropy. The system is not messy, but organized. On the other hand, the entire system might look messy or chaotic, even though the parts of the system follow simple rules and are orderly.[31]

Emergence & Complexity

[change | change source]

Emergent systems are always complex. Though "complexity" is hard to define very well. The best way to understand an emergent system is usually by just watching how it works.

According to Robert Hazen, you need four things for emergence. A lot of parts working together in the system. More interactions between parts make the system more complex. The system needs energy flowing in to keep things interacting. Energy that moves through the system over and over. This probably helps to create the patterns and order we see in organized systems.[32]

Physicist P.W. Anderson also explains that complexity is important. He says trying to explain everything by using basic physics doesn’t help us build a full picture. It does not mean we can start from those laws and build the universe. For example, the standard model explains particles, but it doesn’t help us solve problems in our society. As systems get more complex, new behaviors and rules show up that can’t be understood by just looking at the smaller parts.[33]

See Also

[change | change source]

References

[change | change source]
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Herring, Emily; Radick, Gregory (2019). Emergence in biology: From organicism to systems biology (PDF). pp. 1–11. ISBN 9781315675213.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Holland, John H. (2000). Emergence: from chaos to order. Helix books (3. paperback print ed.). Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books. ISBN 978-0-7382-0142-9.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Martin, Andy; Helmerson, Kristian (2014-10-01). "Emergence: the remarkable simplicity of complexity". The Conversation. Retrieved 2025-04-17.
  4. ↑ Bedau, Mark; Humphreys, Paul (2008). Emergence: contemporary readings in philosophy and science. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT press. ISBN 978-0-262-02621-5.
  5. ↑ Hartmann, Nicolai (2013-03-22), "Possibility and Actuality", Possibility and Actuality, De Gruyter, doi:10.1515/9783110246681, ISBN 978-3-11-024668-1, retrieved 2025-04-18
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Gibb, S. C.; Hendry, Robin Findlay; Lancaster, Tom, eds. (2019). The Routledge handbook of emergence. Routledge handbooks in philosophy. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-38150-1.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Lewes, George Henry (1875). Problems of Life and Mind: The principles of certitude. From the known to the unknown. Matter and force. Force and cause. The absolute in the correlations of feeling and motion. Appendix: Imaginary geometry and the truth of axioms. Lagrange and Hegel: the speculative method. Action at a distance. Osgood.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 O’Connor, Timothy (2021), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), "Emergent Properties", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2025-04-18
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Bedau, Ma (1997). "Weak Emergence". Philosophical Perspectives. 11: 375–399. doi:10.1111/0029-4624.31.s11.17.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Kim, Jaegwon (2006-08-01). "Emergence: Core ideas and issues". Synthese. 151 (3): 547–559. doi:10.1007/s11229-006-9025-0. ISSN 1573-0964.
  11. ↑ Stoljar, Daniel. "Physicalism". plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
  12. ↑ "Downward Causation". pespmc1.vub.ac.be. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
  13. ↑ "Epiphenomenalism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". Retrieved 2025-04-19.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Caruso, Gregg D. (2012). Free will and consciousness: a determinist account of the illusion of free will. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-7136-3. OCLC 773022202.
  15. ↑ "Causal reductionism". www.logicallyfallacious.com. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
  16. ↑ Wilson, R. Paul (2021-12-27). "The Dangers Of The Oversimplification Fallacy". Casino.org Blog. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6 Carroll, Sean M.; Parola, Achyuth. What Emergence Can Possibly Mean.
  18. ↑ Urone, Paul Peter; Hinrichs, Roger (2022-07-13). "13.1 Temperature - College Physics 2e | OpenStax". openstax.org. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
  19. ↑ Rosner, Helge; Leithe-Jasper, Andreas; Carrillo-Cabrera, Wilder; Schnelle, Walter; Ackerbauer, Sarah V.; Gamza, Monika B.; Grin, Yuri (2018-07-24). "Local magnetism in MnSiPt rules the chemical bond". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (30): 7706–7710. doi:10.1073/pnas.1806842115. PMC 6065018. PMID 29987038.
  20. ↑ West, Anthony R. (1999). Basic solid state chemistry (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-98755-0.
  21. ↑ "Conway's Game of Life'". pi.math.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2025-04-19.
  22. ↑ "NASA - Weather". web.archive.org. 2005-05-01. Archived from the original on 2005-05-01. Retrieved 2025-04-20.
  23. ↑ "Determinism | Definition, Philosophers, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2025-03-07. Retrieved 2025-04-20.
  24. ↑ Franklin, R. L. (1968). Freewill and determinism: a study of rival conceptions of man. International library of philosophy and scientific method. London, New York: Routledge & K. Paul; Humanities P. ISBN 978-0-7100-3157-0.
  25. ↑ Christofides, Panagiotis D., ed. (2009). Control and optimization of multiscale process systems. Control engineering. Boston, Mass: Birkhäuser. ISBN 978-0-8176-4792-6. OCLC 232365819.
  26. ↑ Weyns, Danny, ed. (2010). Self-organizing architectures: first international workshop, SOAR 2009, Cambridge, UK, September 14, 2009: revised selected and invited papers. Lecture notes in computer science. Berlin ; New York: Springer. ISBN 978-3-642-14411-0. OCLC 646114586.
  27. ↑ Markowski, Paul; Richardson, Yvette (2011). Mesoscale meteorology in midlatitudes. Advancing weather and climate science. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-470-74213-6.
  28. ↑ Bramble, James H. (1993). Multigrid methods. Pitman research notes in mathematics series. Harlow (GB) New York: Longman scientific & technical J. Wiley & sons. ISBN 978-0-582-23435-2.
  29. ↑ Bourgeois, Anu G. (2008). Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing: 8th International Conference, ICA3PP 2008, Agia Napa, Cyprus, June 9-11, 2008, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science Ser. Si Quing Zheng. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg. ISBN 978-3-540-69500-4.
  30. ↑ Ahrens, C. Donald (2012). Essentials of meteorology: an invitation to the atmosphere (6th ed.). Belmont, Calif: Brooks/Cole. ISBN 978-0-8400-4933-9.
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 Crutchfield, James P. (1994). "The calculi of emergence: computation, dynamics and induction". Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena. 75 (1–3): 11–54. doi:10.1016/0167-2789(94)90273-9.
  32. ↑ Hazen, Robert M. (2005). Genesis: the scientific quest for life's origins. Washington, DC: Henry Press. ISBN 978-0-309-09432-0.
  33. ↑ Bedau, Mark, ed. (2008). Emergence: contemporary readings in philosophy and science. A Bradford book. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-02621-5.
Retrieved from "https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emergence&oldid=10284592"