# Emergence **Domain:** Complexity / Systems / Philosophy of Science **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Developing **Related:** [[Complex Adaptive Systems]], [[Distributed Intelligence]], [[Superorganism]], [[Consciousness Emergence]] --- ## Definition **Emergence** describes organized properties or behaviors that arise through interactions among parts and are not usefully explained as the action of any one component alone. ## Evidence Boundary Calling a phenomenon emergent does not explain its mechanism and does not prove consciousness. The corpus must specify the interactions, scale and evidence involved rather than use emergence as a synonym for mystery. ## Backlinks [[Santa Fe Institute]] · [[Complex Adaptive Systems]] ## Relationships - **Edge Annual Question source relationship:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] preserves the annual-question source corpus from which a proposition-specific quotation is connected to this entry. - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "While I find this a tricky idea on the one hand, it is utterly simple and elegant on the other. Pattee has given us a schema and a way to think about how, using nothing but physics (including the principle of complementarity), life comes out of non-living stuff. The schema, way up the evolutionary scale, also accounts for how the subjective mind can emerge from objective neurons. Pattee suggests that instead of approaching conscious cognition as either information processing or neural dynamics, there is a third approach available. Consciousness is not reducible to one or the other. Both should be kept on the table. They are complementary properties of the same system. I say hats off to Pattee. We brain scientists have our work cut out for us." > **— Michael Gazzaniga**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Mind and Neurons May Be Complementary Properties of One System by Michael Gazzaniga|Mind and Neurons May Be Complementary Properties of One System by Michael Gazzaniga]] > "Hidden layers embody, in a concrete physical form, the fashionable but rather vague and abstract idea of emergence. Each hidden layer neuron has a template. It becomes activated, and sends signals of its own to the next layer, precisely when the pattern of information it's receiving from the preceding layer matches (within some tolerance) that template. But this is just to say, in precision-enabling jargon, that the neuron defines, and thus creates, a new emergent concept." > **— Frank Wilczek**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?”* [[reminders/Information/Hidden Layers Create New Emergent Concepts by Frank Wilczek|Hidden Layers Create New Emergent Concepts by Frank Wilczek]] > “I was entering biology at that time, with a background studying neural circuits and logic. It was clear to most biologists that some huge genetic network among the then thought 100,000 human genes somehow controlled cell differentiation in ontogeny. My question was an odd one: Did evolution have to struggle hard to evolve very specific genetic networks to support ontogeny, or, I hoped, were there huge classes, or "ensembles" of networks that as a total class, behaved with sufficient self-organized order to account for major features of ontogeny?” > **— Stuart A. Kauffman**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cell Types May Be Dynamical Attractors by Stuart A. Kauffman|Cell Types May Be Dynamical Attractors by Stuart A. Kauffman]] > “What is the principle that causes complex adaptive systems (life, organisms, minds, societies) to spontaneously emerge from the interaction of simpler elements (chemicals, cells, neurons, individual humans)?” > **— W. Daniel Hillis**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/What Makes Minds and Societies Emerge From Simpler Parts by W. Daniel Hillis|What Makes Minds and Societies Emerge From Simpler Parts by W. Daniel Hillis]] > “You will begin to perceive the entangled system that makes so many of our day-to-day decisions. Although we created it, we did not exactly design it. It evolved. Our relationship to it is similar to our relationship to our biological ecosystem. We are co-dependent, and not entirely in control.” > **— W. Daniel Hillis**, *2010, Edge Annual Question: “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Risk Debate/We Created the System but We Did Not Design It by W. Daniel Hillis|We Created the System but We Did Not Design It by W. Daniel Hillis]] > “The adjacent possible, for a chemical reaction graph, is the set of novel molecules that can be created out of those existing now.” > **— Stuart A. Kauffman**, *2004 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Evolution/The Adjacent Possible Contains New Molecules by Stuart A. Kauffman|The Adjacent Possible Contains New Molecules by Stuart A. Kauffman]]