Emergence

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This video presents the ideas of emergence, phase transitions, and strong vs. weak emergence.

According to Wikipedia, emergence is conceived as a process whereby larger entities, patterns, and regularities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities that themselves do not exhibit such properties.
In the previous section we discussed how synergistic relations give rise to the phenomena of two or more elements having a greater combined output or effect than the simple product of each in isolation. This process where by the interaction between elements gives rise to something that is greater than the sum of their parts is called emergence.
So where as when we were talking about synergies we simply said that the combined effect was greater than its parts in isolation. The concept of emergence though implies that what is created out of these synergic relations is not just quantitatively different it is in fact qualitatively different. That is to say none of the elements that contribute to the emergence of this new phenomena have its qualities when taken in isolation.
There are many examples of this but maybe the simples is the example of water, water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, neither of these two elements that make up the system have the property or quality of wetness, but when we combine them we get a substance called water that has the quality of being wet, this property of wetness has emerged out of the interaction of the systems elements and it only exists on the systems level.
Another often sited example of emergence is the phenomena of life, biological systems such as a plant cell consist of a set of inanimate molecules none of which in isolation have the property of life, but it is the particular way that these elements are arrange into structures and processes that enable the emergent phenomena of the living system as an entirety.
Our world is full of examples of emergence that we could site, from ant colonies to galaxies and cultures, but all of these are types of structures, where as emergence is really a process, these systems are then the product of a the process of emergence that has play out to create two qualitatively different levels to the system.
Emergence then is a process through which systems develop or we might say grow. During this process unassociated elements interact, synchronize to form synergies and out of this emerges some new and novel phenomena that previously did not exist.
In order to create some qualitatively different and new phenomena the system must go through what we call a phase transition. A phase transition is an often rapid or accelerated period during the process of a systems development, either side of which the fundamental parameters with which we describe the system change qualitatively.
Again there are lots of examples of this such a the phase transition between solid and liquid that a substance goes through when heated, but maybe the most dramatic example is the metamorphose of a butterfly from being a caterpillar to a mature adult. Not only dose the system’s morphology change but the whole set of parameters that we define it with are so drastically altered prior and post the phase transition that we give the creature a whole new names.


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