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Now that some new parties have expressed an interest and are contributing, I think the time has arrived to archive the dispute that began over tagging for citations and led to the article being protected (frozen) December 3. I have archived it and then copied three specific remarks on subject matter (edited for concision) to a section following, to refresh their currency to help guide the development of the article content, since they seemed especially noteworthy and cogent. If this is premature, we can work the material back in (not a revert, please, as I am adding some original remarks of my own below), but I'm confident the timing is right. Hu 17:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I apologize, but in the process I inadvertently clobbered [1] an edit by Fourdee. I have placed it in the Archive 2 since it seems to be appropriate there. [2] — Hu 18:12, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Hofstadter supports only "weak emergence" in explaining consciousness, from GEB:
Gell-Mann on the subject of consciousness rejects the mystical, new-cause and pseudo-Heisenberg-based explanations - from the summary of "Consciousness, Reduction, and Emergence":
(Quoted by Fourdee 21:05, 4 December 2006 (UTC))
First, I have a suggestion on an approach that I think is more likely to resolve the dispute. Why not focus, at least in the introduction, on describing how the concept of emergence has developed and been applied in a number of different disciplines, instead of trying to definitively say what *emergence* *is*.
Second, some more general thoughts: While I agree with many of his points, I believe that Fourdee has conflated the imposition of a model on a system with the determination of the causal relationships amongst the whole and its components. Clearly, it is incorrect to say that the complete dynamics of a (deterministic) system are not implied by the dynamics of its individual interactions. However, by embracing the broadest possible definition of emergence, and failing to explain the process by which the concept has been extended, the current article makes it seem like this is the claim.
No one makes the argument that the mathematical operators that compose a nonlinear dynamical system such as, say, the Logistic map do not "explain" or "predict" the function's resultant behavior. The only reason for this I can think of is that in the context it's abundantly clear that the behavior under consideration is the result of systemic properties: the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Also, it's interesting to note that the article on Complex Systems doesn't even mention emergence. It does, however, link to Synergetics, which deals with emergence in the more limited sense of self-organization. It would seem to me that this is the narrowest, most mathematical definition of emergence, and an important historical motivator for the concept. This article should definitely have more than a couple of sentences to say on the role of entropy in the matter (pun intended!).
Finally, here is a quote from a paper called "Perpetuating Evolutionary Emergence" by Alastair Channon, which I think is a nice introduction to the way that the same core concept has been approached from a number of different perspectives:
The paper is available online if anyone would like to look up the references to Cariani and Steels.
Kyle Cronan 11:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's a paper that would seem to be relevant to our discussion: [3]
There's a lot of philosophical language that just makes no sense to me, but this section in particular seems helpful:
It would seem that this distinction between "strong emergence" and "weak emergence" is primarily of concern to Philosophy. The author's characterization of weak emergence, later in the paper, captures the more CS/physics oriented view of emergence as new "global forms" arising out of local behavior, as well as the more evolutionary view of emergence as requiring increasingly sophisticated models of the system's dynamics (ie, open-ended evolution--see Universal Constructor).
I believe what we must certainly avoid is giving the impression that these views of emergence, inasmuch as they represent current scientific theory, somehow support strong emergence, a philosophical position about irreducibility. Kyle Cronan 07:16, 8 December 2006 (UTC
Fourdee, you want to know how systems methodology is not like the scientific method. To put it in one word, "laboratory". Science presumes that things can be taken apart, isolated independently, then the way they work without countless other things acting on them (that is, the way they work in a controlled and artificial environment) is the way the work in the real world. While that can be useful, its a statement of faith. Systems methodology doesn't make that assumption. It realizes that the countless other things are possibly acting on what is being studied in ways that are unknown and, therefore, to isolate what is being studied in order to see what it does is very likely to study it when it isn't behaving the same as it does in the real world environment. Kyle, why are you presuming that philosophy and science are two seperate things, especially given that I have already pointed out that science cannot be seperated from its philosophical underpinnings? Is it because I didn't explain that clearly enough or is it that you didn't read what I wrote?-Psychohistorian 01:06, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I have made a number of edits based on the start made by Kyle to Talk:Emergence/NewVersion, comprising of the following changes (which are in the context of some suggestions for next steps, below):
Hu 17:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
After a couple of years of experience here (during which references were revamped right across the encyclopedia) and some recent experimentation, I have concluded that I heartily recommend the Wikipedia implementation of the Harvard citation schema, particularly for scholarly articles, for the following reasons (no other Wikipedia scheme offers all of these advantages):
In the reference/bibliography section, sort on primary order alphabetical on surname, secondary on year. Use unspaced Harvard Citations in the text for compactness, and fully spaced (for readability and clarity during editing) Harvard References in the Reference/Bibliography section.
Hu 17:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
For the next steps onward I have the following suggestions:
Hu 17:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your work Hu. However, I find this new introduction completely objectionable, still uncited, and completely counter to the balanced view which is the only resolution to our dispute.
"Cannot be explained", "the whole is more than the sum of its parts", and "inability". Those are not facts. It seems to be you ignored all of my objections and came back with an even stronger phrasing of your view. I also think the introduction is the first part we need to address, so that a consistent definition for or explanation of emergence can be used throughout the article, as well defining the tone to be used. Were I to edit this new version at the moment I would delete a lot of it. Fourdee 18:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I suggest we leave the introduction as-is for the time-being, since by working the article into good shape, all issues will get straightened out, and a good introduction will emerge at that time. Hu 18:18, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
No, as I explained above, I left the introduction basically the way Kyle had changed it (it was Kyle who made "an entirely new one"), and no, please don't put words in my mouth (again) (I am not building on what you suppose) and please don't threaten "your edits will be to no end". Please be more cooperative. Please recognize that I had just done a substantial amount of work on the new version and a substantial amount of explanation free of rancor in the spirit of cooperation (8 minutes before you attacked me (again) with "It does not seem that Hu or Psychohistorian are willing to accept the offer of collaborating on a new version before unprotection". It was essentially a simultaneous edit, but the edits do show that a) At least Kyle and I are collaborating cooperatively, and b) 14 minutes further on you continue to bicker. If you must bicker, please at least get your facts straight, but I do suggest that we others are cooperating and you are increasingly becoming the odd man out of that realm. Now, let's hope that this last little bit was an accident and, now that work on the new version has begun in earnest, that cooperation will prevail. Hu 18:50, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
In the spirit of my remarks of 18:50 UTC just above, I will not respond at this time beyond this sentence. Hu 19:13, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Again, In the spirit of my remarks of 18:50 UTC just above, I will not respond at this time beyond this sentence. Hu 19:26, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok. Hu 20:59, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for being negative and making assumptions, Hu. Thanks for working on the collaboration. Fourdee 21:34, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
If you don't mind, we could just delete this section except for my proposed introduction, this bickering is indeed not productive. Fourdee 21:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
With the article recently added to WikiProject Physics (which I support), and the article under heavy dispute at present, I think it is worth keeping in the very front of our minds that emergence and emergent behavior are concepts that are developed in many disciplines across the academic community.
For example, in the social sciences alone, there is a long and complex history. Writings on emergent outcomes of human social behavior go back at least to the 6th century BC, in both ancient Chinese and ancient Greek thought. In the second millenium, there was a thread of such thought, primarily but not exclusively in economics, from late medieval through the mid-nineteenth centuries, followed by an explosion of such thought, across the social sciences, after about 1860 with PJ Proudhon, Carl Menger, Emile Durkheim, Michael Polanyi, Friedrich Hayek and Thomas Kuhn. In the late twentieth century there was substantial work in a variety of fields including group cooperation, social justice, coordination theory, 'governance' (Political Science), the progress of 'science' within academic communities, and of course many areas within economics. A quick search of any of the social science research databases will produce a slew of articles and books.
I do not have time to get heavily involved in writing this article (at least, not for a few weeks), and would choose to stay out of the current contentious debate in any case, but I do think it is worthwhile to keep this perspective in mind when a number of you are proposing to substantially reshape the article right now. I hope this was a constructive thought and helpful to your work in improving the article. I believe it is important that the article remain consciously and explicitly cross-disciplinary, from the physical or hard sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Computer Science, etc.) to the natural sciences (Neuro-biology, Geology, Meteorology, Hydrology), to the social sciences (Sociology, Political Science, Economics, etc.). (N2e 21:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. You raise interesting points to explore. Hu 21:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Science was called "Natural philosophy" for many years. As a practical matter, it doesn't matter whether scientists are philosophers or not. What does matter is that philosophers have had some useful and interesting things to say about Emergence, and thus are included in the article. Hu 22:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
What do you all think of this as a starting point? Can we all agree that this is an appropriate way to define the overall concept, before the article gets into all the nuance and controversy, that is?
Fourdee, I presume that you're opposed to "can not be explained," but I have tried to temper that with "mere aggregate effect." A decent compromise? What I'm trying to say here is not that the systemic behavior isn't an effect of the individual interactions, but that to arrive at the effect you must do more than simply "sum up" the constituent parts. In fact, we often just don't have the analytical tools to follow cause and effect all the way to the level of systemic behavior, so it becomes necessary to study the system from a different, higher-level perspective. Kyle Cronan 00:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
So, for the First Sentence, what are the practical consequences of this little debate on "systems science" versus "science"? Hu 00:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Excessive indentation uses up valuable space on the left. When comments are placed in chronological order, it is not necessary to indent further. However, if an editor goes back to reply out of chronological order to a prior remark then incrementing the indentation is a good idea. Occasionally it makes sense to outdent to the margin to reset indentation. A conservative approach to indentation preserves the flow of the discussion. Hu 02:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
As everyone agrees that the nonsense before does nothing to get the article improved, I have moved it, as the page was back to over 50k in length. Fourdee 02:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Not strictly true, not all of what went before was nonsense.Talk:Emergence/Archive_3#A_Medium_Revamp Also, I note that you made a last remark and immediately archived the discussion. However, since Psychohistorian graciously agreed to not contest any last word you wanted to make on a thread there, it is perhaps just as well to archive it. Hu 02:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Eh, we can always put more remarks on here :) Seems like there's plenty of space now! - JustinWick 05:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
How about "There is no firm consensus on a precise definition of Emergence."? That seems to be the result of a lot of discussion here. I am still convinced that if the article is made whole and healthy, then the introduction will emerge naturally, and from that the first sentence will emerge. However, if I'm in the minority on that conviction, then it is reasonable to attempt the first sentence and I've given it my try. Hu 02:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
How have we even established this much? How can we improve the article by adding more uncited statements? This is still a waste of time, whether or not I agree with what you are saying, because we are not working from content that will improve the verifiability of the article. Fourdee 02:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
So, now that you (Fourdee) can't even agree to disagree, and you call working on the first sentence a waste of time and for you working on the article instead of working on the introduction is not an option, I think you have boxed yourself into a corner and I suggest you withdraw from the article entirely. (Note: the indentation of this remark is at the left since all three remarks are in chronological sequence. Please leave as is.) Hu 03:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Fourdee: can you find a good, citable definition somewhere? Anyone else, can you? I think Fourdee has some perspectives on this that are correct, and I'm afraid the discussion would be a bit unbalanced was Fourdee to withdraw, but I think at some point, Fourdee, you are going to have to find some citations for this stuff as well. I think it is reasonable to cite the fact that Emergence has different meanings in different fields, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have any definition. Man, this would be so much easier if we were like Nobel laurates and world-renowed philosophers. Who the heck came up with an encyclopedia based on random grad students and amateurs, heh. (I guess I count myself with the random grad students, even though I recently graduated that) - JustinWick 05:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I empathize with your desire, Justin, to understand things as well as a Nobel laureate, but I think it is actually a good thing that we aren't, because that level of understanding does not always correspond well with the ability or desire to communicate and teach. In other words, if we can communicate the subject well enough at our level, we can explain it to each other and to others who might be entering college or merely "well-read". Furthermore, the more experienced among us know how to work Wikipedia cooperatively to produce results that are greater than any one of us or any one expert could produce. We are well situated to be the bridge between the "experts" and the core demographic of Wikipedia readers. Hu 08:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
One theory about writing good Wikipedia articles holds that statements in the introduction should not be given citations or be studded with Wiki links, if two things are true about them, two things that would be true about a well written article anyway. 1) Every statement in the introduction should be expanded upon in depth in the article. 2) Those expansions should be properly provided with references. The theory goes that by keeping the introduction relatively free of Wiki links and citations and footnotes, it will be more readable and therefore more people will actually read it and then read the article. The introduction is not the foundation of the article, it is the storefront window that quickly shows people an overview and entices them into the article. The foundation of the article or the framework (pick your metaphor) is the structure of the section headings and sub-section headings, and then the key concept of each individual paragraph, which can be thought of as headerless sub-sub-sections. Get the organization of the concepts right and then it becomes easier to fill it out. This is part of my reasoning why it is better to write the article and then the introduction. Similarly, the size of the introduction depends on the size of the article. Note to skeptics: Despite scurrilous statements to the contrary (by one editor in particular), I am thoroughly in favor of citations and references in the body of the article. I also advocate not disrupting the article (by extension of Wikipedia) to make a point. Hu 09:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
The current focus of work is Talk:Emergence/NewVersion. Hu 09:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I have limited interest in doing the footwork for this article when my position is merely that the uncited statements should be removed. However a quick search yielded the following useful practical explanations of "emergence" from this paper [4] (which also has a lot of citations of its own):
These citations have been archived to /References to save space here. Fourdee 07:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
These quotes offer the sort of supportable, carefully phrased, factually accurate, logically correct explanations of Emergence we should be using. It's not difficult or time-consuming to find this kind of citation. Fourdee 10:02, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps we should move all the quotes so far collected to a subpage of Talk:Emergence so they can survive this page being archived - we could put a link to it at the top. I'll give it a shot and you can undo it if you don't agree. Fourdee 06:48, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Seems like a reasonable thing to do. Hu 07:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok I have put all the quotes I could find in the article and talk pages in /References and added a link to it in the archive box up top. Also added another quote to the strong vs. weak emergence section. The "not widely held in the physical sciences" bit could probably be removed from the section if it's unwelcome, it would be hard to find a citation for that. Fourdee 07:22, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Looks like all the major problems were fixed, and people are in agreement about the outcome. Wish I had been able to help more, but I know little about this subject. Thanks to everyone for helping, questioning, and figuring out the truth of the matter. - JustinWick 05:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
What is controversial about emergence? It's briefly mentioned in the opening of the article and not thoroughly addressed anywhere. 132.170.228.170 18:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Can somebody rewrite the beginning? The quotes are unneccessarily confusing. Dreamer.redeemer 08:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
The large number of links in this section is rather silly & not helpful for someone wanting to find genuinely related articles. For example, the link to Free will, which has little to do with emergence, and Rampancy, which is a ridiculous article. Perhaps someone else with more time & expertise than I could cut most of these. 84.70.195.69 19:10, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the following pending discussion.
A simple way to unify all kinds of emergent phenomena is to understand them as having a common process of emerging, rather than similar features or consequences. The emergence of all recognized emergent properties appears to take place by processes that begin and end, displaying the growth (and decay) of the internalized networks of self-organizing processes that bring them about. Identifying the autonomous growth of systems is also a rich source for finding new new forms of emergence. The developing methods for doing this are efficient and seemingly testable and reliable. The hypothesis that growth and emergence are actually the same thing has not yet been fully discussed, but has potential.
This is hard to understand and seems WP:OR-ish. (Is there a simple way to understand emergence? is emergence about complexity?) 1Z 14:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
The level of cites in this article is good, but there are still quite a few un-cited assertions.
Additionally, we should make the citation format uniform throughout the article. -- Writtenonsand 17:52, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
I inserted the following on 5/6/07 in the lead paragraph: "The probable common mode of causation is the self-organization of internal loop networks, or 'systems', growing from imperceptible beginnings in the regions of gradients". Someone appropriately inserted "[citation needed]" The citations available are mostly to unpublished work, though the research has been quite successful. No one has been willing to discuss the very substantial additions to the scientific method required. What's needed to study emergence as a process is a way of closely examining individual events, which I now have published on the web at some length in the "physics of happening". I did go into the matter sufficiently to point the way in a paper for the Society for General Systems Research in 1984 conference, "Directed Opportunity, Directed Impetus: New tools for investigating autonomous causation" now republished as http://www.synapse9.com/DirOpp.pdf. Well it's missing most of the details, and the specific wording of the claim above, but the main substance is there. The fact is that the 'perfect formula' is the one you *look through*, not the one you *look at*. The basic reorientation of methods needed was done as part of a study of daily climate evolution in solar homes in the late 70's and the math and software done in the 90's. My best work is a piece on a fantastic little example of punctuated equilibrium for a plankton. If anyone has any idea of some journal that would be knowledgeable enough about evolving systems to consider it, I'd be delighted to finish up my latest (10th) version of the paper and submit it again.
Phil Henshaw —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pfhenshaw (talk • contribs) 11:43, 8 May 2007 (UTC).
None of that adds up to notability. Please read the guidelines. 1Z 15:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
This article appears to have a clear ideological bias; so it's not a mystery why the most important, fundamental framework of emergence -- marxist dialectical-materialism -- is wholly absent from it. However, since Wikipedia pretends to objectivity over the long-term, there's no way this issue can be avoided indefintely, simply because one party is generally always first off the mark with getting their POV "out there".
I mean, is there "thinktank" organizing behind this systematic Rightwing article-writing, or something..? Poor show, people. This is not true objectivity at work here.
Pazouzou 06:50, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Slimmed this section down some, and added an OR tag. It's mostly about "Emergent Concepts", which from a quick google is a term that seems to exist but not with the technical sense that the paragraph implies it has.
From what I can gather, this section posits an emergent concept as something like what Darwinism was in its first introduction, in the sense that at first Darwinism was greeted with widespread skepticism in the scientific community, but is now widely accepted in the same as one of the two pillars of Modern evolutionary synthesis.
Also, this section probably needs a new header, as it isn't really about fads or beliefs.--BlackAndy 01:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
The main page provides an example of emergence in the WWW. Can anyone think/share examples of emergence in a large network of software systems? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.131.203.96 (talk) 01:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC).
Hi.
I noticed this:
"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."
However, strings do not create space and time. Space and time do not emerge from them -- they move in space and time. The strings still have a spacetime that they inhabit. mike4ty4 01:32, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
"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." - Given that String Theory is pretty speculative, non-predictive, and as far as I know entirely unfounded in any sort of empirical data (no one's ever seen a string, or a Higgs boson - they're purely theoretical constructs), I don't think this is a great example of emergence. Mass Space and Time are the basic structures, and higgs bosons etc are derived by mathematical reverse engineering from them (and to a large extent in spite of them - mass space and time don't seem to have nine dimensions). It isn't really plausible to say they "emerge" from the interaction of Higgs Bosons. ElectricRay (talk) 16:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
This article defines emergence strictly as high-level complexity resulting from low-level simplicity. However, it is the inverse and somewhat counter-intuitive definition which really is the relevant concept to science (and philosophy). It is the emergence of comprehensible high-level simplicity from low-level complexity that defines emergence. We can comprehend some of the mechanisms of natural processes at a high level (for example, psychologic impulses which may underpin behavior) even though we could not possible derive such insights from a consideration of molecular processes which are the unimaginably complex fundamental building blocks of our brains. We can formulate fairly simple physical laws such as the gas laws which describe the behavior of gases without consideration of the quantum uncertainties which surround the individual sub-atomic particles which, after all, are the root structure of the gas molecules. This complexity leading to emergent simplicity is the key feature which allows us to comprehend the world at our scale, and the mechanism by which we can reach some understanding of physical processes when reductionism fails us. The whole can indeed be greater than the sum of its parts. The British physicist David Deutsch has a beautiful exposition of the subject in his book The Fabric of Reality. I think this article needs major revision to include these concepts.Cd195 (talk) 05:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
the two articles emergence and strong emergence should be merged
"The concept have been used since Aristotle", says the text. Is this not just a typical confusion of general descriptions with terms? Terms require contexts and I would wager Aristotle had quite a different context than modern philosophy and systems theory. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 10:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
I think using the mobius strip in the mathematics section is misleading; a sphere can be built up in the same way and any subset of the triangles will be isomorphic a square, but not the whole; a torus can be built up cylinders so that no subset is connected and of genus 1; same goes for a circle, a triangle, etc. with line segments. Additionally, every prime can be written as a sum of composites so that no subsum is prime. And so on. At any rate, since their are an arbitrary number of predicates that can be applied to objects and decompositions of them, it is inevitable that one can make almost any mathematical object into an example of emergence; thus, I feel that the mobius strip is misleading since the average reader will see the mobius strip as more exotic than spheres and primes, and that this will cause them to think that there is greater depth to this concept than is true(at least, in so far as mathematics is concerned.) Phoenix1177 (talk) 04:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Additionally, the fact that the world wide web obeys a power law doesn't seem remarkable since there is no such thing as randomness, it's bound to follow some form of laws. I think my problem here is that if the world wide web(or any of the other examples here) exhibited some other laws/structures, then this page would work just aswell by pointing out those different laws/structures. In other words, all your pointing out is that these complex objects obey laws of some form, and that these laws are sensible to humans; the later part is the only remarkable feature, but the page gives the impression asif it were otherwise. Phoenix1177 (talk) 04:42, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Sorry to keep blathering on, I realize that in my second comment, above, I left out the part about no substructure having that property; nonetheless, we can always point something out about it that will satisfy this, unless we limit ourselves in what we can point out(which does not seem to be going on here.) For example, if we limit ourselves to topology and structures built up out of triangles, then we will not be able to find a distinction between two triangles joined into a square and a single triangle; however, we will be able to find such distinctions if we are allowed to talk about the number of sides when the complex is a polygon. I guess I would like to see more criticism of the topic, or have it pointed out that this phenomenon is nontrivial, in the vast majority of cases, only if we limit what properties we are allowed to refer to. 66.202.66.78 (talk) 09:00, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Alex J. Ryan, 2006. How is something (to be submitted) to the arXiv? The paper looked interesting enough for me to dig around and see if anyone else in the actual field had looked at it. 128.171.31.11 (talk) 19:43, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
The link to this paper is broken. -- Brinticus 06:16, 31 October 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.12.247.12 (talk)
The following assertion is made in the Ceramic Engineering article:
"Self-assembly" is the most common term in use in the modern scientific community to describe the spontaneous aggregation of particles (atoms, molecules, colloids, micelles, etc.) without the influence of any external forces. Large groups of such particles are known to assemble themselves into thermodynamically stable, structurally well-defined arrays, quite reminiscent of one of the 7 crystal systems found in metallurgy and mineralogy (e.g. face-centered cubic, body-centered cubic, etc.).
I think this is a good non-living example of emergence at the molecular level in inorganic structures. I'm not incorporating any of this in the Emergence article today however as the sourcing was a bit unclear. When it is better sourced in that article, it might make a useful example for this one as well. Cheers. N2e (talk) 04:41, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
Not by anyone familiar with bangkok traffic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.176.55.202 (talk) 05:02, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
In May 2007, a multi-disciplinary conference on "Understanding Complex Systems" was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with the participation of researchers from various academic disciplines and industry. Later, in 2009, an invited article [1] resulting from the conference, appeared in the journal Complexity, a cross-disciplinary journal focusing on the science of complex adaptive systems. The article describes a general understanding of complex systems dynamics, without formal definitions, and provides a good background for understanding the accepted meaning of terms such as emergence and self-organization.
I believe we should be content for now with this level of understanding. Emergence is under intense scrutiny, and many researchers find the term useful and appropriate for their needs. Scientific terms are frequently defined by their use in science. Nobody knew what was Physics until somebody said "this is Physics". Researchers working on emergence are telling us what they mean by "emergence" as clearly as they can.
The other factor, is that the discipline itself is progressing very fast. There is a great deal of new understanding, which makes much of the preceding discussion look somewhat obsolete. The article has some structural problems, and it must be rebuilt and updated. But it also has some very useful material, which should be preserved. SergioPi (talk) 19:51, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
References
Emergence is very fascinating yet not always beneficial - the point is omitted in the article, yet examples create only positive impression. Even with good or neutral individual intentions, emergence in human groups may produce stunningly good or bad organizations. Corporations' cultures are an example of emergence with potentially sustained priorities misalignment w/society's long term interests. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Didenko (talk • contribs) 00:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
If you're going to talk about aggregate properties, I think the CLT would at least shed some light on the subject from a historical perspective. I'm not an expert in emergence, so if anyone could provide some feedback as to whether "the CLT qualifies as emergence" that would be quite helpful. DavidBrooksPokorny (talk) 21:32, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Biology emerges from chemistry which emerges from particle physics. Each of these is a Formal system with its own objects, actions, and rules. They are all just protons, electrons, and neutrons therefore they are all made of the same objects so they must differ in their actions or rules. See Deductive system and Axiomatic system. Just granpa (talk) 20:57, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
In Emergent properties and processes: " . . the fallacy of division is a fallacy" is ambiguous at best. s/b the theory of division is a fallacy? or the fallacy of division is correct? Jrdoubleyou (talk) 15:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
The following section is removed today:
This section is removed with the argument:
Now this seems a bit radical. The text seems ok. Why not just add a reference-needed tag? - Mdd 19:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
-G — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.168.65 (talk) 02:48, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
On rationalwiki is say Irreducible complexity (as proposed by some creationists) was taken from systems theory, can Irreducible complexity (emergence) redirects here. Maybe a mention of this theory could be added to the article? Jonpatterns (talk) 08:54, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
The concept of Emergence like chaos, exists only in our imaginations. Take for example the fact that iron has the property of hardness. The iron atom does not have this property. But the property hardness doesn't really exist, it is just how our primitive senses interpret the properties of the iron atom when they are combined together. So emergence really does happen but it happens only in our minds not in reality.
Cmatrix 10:58, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Hardness is a mechanical property rated on a scale with diamond the hardest (if not the hardest) material(s) known. also, maths is a hard nut because it is "tough" to crack.Tkyoung (talk) 02:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
On 21 Oct 2010, 148.134.37.3 added a bunch of Intelligent Design propaganda. I don't know (or care) enough about the topic of emergence to address all of the changes, but I thought someone might want to take a look. (And it appears that this wouldn't be this user's first run in with the authorities.) Steve in Appalachia (talk) 17:18, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
It would be great if also there was a simple explanation of 'how' the sum of parts are (made) greater than the whole. Tkyoung (talk) 02:26, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
My investigations of the subject have convinced me that there is more than one definition of "emergence". I visited the page with the vague intention of changing it accordingly. The new version is in fact pretty much what I was aiming at, so it only remains for me to lend my support to it. 1Z 02:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
The extensive list of citations Psychohistorian provided has been archived to /References along with other quotes and removed from here to free space. Fourdee 07:24, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
--Greg Royston Molineux (talk) 00:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)==Unprotection Requested==
I have requested unprotection at Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection#Current_requests_for_unprotection. This version looks pretty solid; it could use more work and someone will probably be interested in adding detail, more citations and subsections. You guys may also be interested in using some of these references for improving weak emergence and strong emergence which were pretty sparse (and probably somewhat incorrect) the last time I looked at them. This is an important article and I'm glad we managed to get past the arguing and put a quality overview together for it. Thanks guys. Fourdee 06:48, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
--Greg Royston Molineux (talk) 00:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)emergence and strong emergence are degrees of the same thing, strong emergence should be a sub heading of emergence as you could also have weak emergence and dysfunctional emergence —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greg Royston Molineux (talk • contribs) 00:31, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Consider putting the key definitions in "History" (including the corrected Aristotle citation), replace definition with description and use the arc + arc + arc = circle explanation. Just a simple one followed by a more complete description if required by philosophical argument. Consider this: If there are different definitions then either (a) one is wrong (the frog is green, the frog is orange), (b) they are similes (the frog croaked, the frog riddiped), (c) they are used in a different context (the frog is green, the frog is wet).Tkyoung (talk) 02:37, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
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Since this paper is not published in English, it has no relevance in a Wikipedia article written in English
(Unsigned edit)
You're saying that if there were a subject which English readers are interested in, but the only source material is non-English, an article would not be permitted? Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me; that simply means it'll be harder for other editors to confirm. Internet users do have a number of language translators available. Scott McNay (talk) 22:14, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
Money is discussed in this article as an emergent property of economic systems. Indeed, I do believe it is an emergent property of modern complex economic systems. However, as described an related to "Austrian economics" this cannot be true. There is nothing in the "Austrian economic approach" (what the approach actually says is difficult to pin down) that has emergence in it, it is just the opposite. I think if money is an emergent property of complex economic systems, we need to find some references and develop a section that really establishes this. If this cannot be done soon, I think the money section should be deleted because as it stands, it is not an example of emergence.--I am One of Many (talk) 18:46, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
@73.208.7.120, Tomwsulcer, and I am One of Many: Section on money removed in February 2015, [see diff]. 73.208.7.120 stated 'There is no consensus on the origin of money.' Jonpatterns (talk) 13:10, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
Determinism and reductionism seem to be two sides of the same coin: determinism aims at a final result in a goal-oriented way, while reductionism follows that way backwards. Emergence and reductionism are by definition contradictory. But what about determinism?
Almost everything we perceive in our environment is emergent. All artefacts we see around us, but also all living beings are emergent phenomena, with properties that can not be found in their building blocks. We often cannot see the complex interactions that are responsible for the emergent phenomena because they occur on a microscopic (eg molecular) scale.
For example, a good cook has the talent to combine different ingredients in the right proportion to create a perfectly balanced dish. The taste of the dish is emergent because it gives you sensations that cannot be found in the individual ingredients that make it up. Is this a deterministic process? If you consider the recipe as an algorithm, then you will be able to achieve the same result as the cook who invented the recipe. However, if you only have the final result, it is difficult to analyze how this product came about. The secret of the cook is difficult to analyze reductionistically....
Another example: the score of a piece of music could be considered as the "recipe" to be able to perform the piece of music. A form of determinism indeed. But we all know that the quality of the performing artist determines whether we will ultimately find the music beautiful or ugly. Just as with a recipe, there are all kinds of nuances that are not described in the score, combined with the musician's skill, which do have a significant influence on the end result. In the same way you can distinguish between a real Rembrandt and a fake Rembrandt.
An invention can also be seen as an emergent phenomenon: by combining components (which themselves are often emergent), you can get something new with characteristics that you can not find in those components. Reductionistic analysis of the invention, however, often makes it possible to imitate that invention. The inventor protects himself against this by means of a patent.
Whether you can copy something or not depends very much on the complexity of the product. But there is no principal reason why it could not. You can indeed create an emergent phenomenon by following a deterministic recipe and vice versa, by reductionist analysis, how such an emergent phenomenon can occur. The number of factors that you need to involve in your analysis therefore mainly limits whether reductionism is also practically possible. And then you quickly encounter limits .... Analysing a computer program f.i. is practically impossible if only the digital codes are available.
The emergent nature of an invention is, as a matter of fact, determined by the functionality of that invention, which indeed cannot determined deterministically from its building blocks (That is why it is an invention!). This functionality is context-dependent and that is dependent on the perspective of the observer. When you remove the context, or if you are an observer who does not understand the context, the functionality disappears and with it the emergent character.
An invention (and therefore all artefacts) is therefore subjectively emergent.
Ypan1944 (talk) 09:40, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
In previous versions of this section, I thought the difference was well explained. The present article seems to do a poor job of detailing the philosophical differences between the two. Simply saying that one can be explained by computer simulations while the other cannot does nothing to provide the reader with a real understanding of the philosophical differences between the two. Obviously this is a big problem for uneducated readers who come here seeking to understand how the two relate to our understanding of awareness. The real difference remains obtuse to the casual reader.
It would be better if this section included a treatment of how the two relate to awareness. Strong emergence precludes matter containing elements of awareness, while weak emergence assumes matter must have elements of awareness to it. This key difference is not readily understandable from the article.
It's almost like weak emergence is simply being treated as if it's a microscopic version of strong emergence, rather than the separate philosophical structure that it is. Assuming matter contains elements of awareness is a big deal. It should be emphasized. Weak emergence treats awareness as a fundamental constituent of the universe, rather than being a product of a material system. This is not explained at all in the current article. 158.61.0.254 (talk) 23:10, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Two further comments on this topic (may require elaboration / correction by relevant specialists): (1) A large part of this section reads like a cross between a review of Bedau's book, and self justification. (2) Perhaps liken it to a mechanical arm+hand (+strings attached). An arm can reach and an hand can grab. Together they can reach and grab (weak emergence), you can line it up to grab an apple (following the above paragraph, is it that awareness exists but is not applied?). Strong emergence: If the apple is moved, it needs that external 'awareness' (lets call it that) to be able to (a) 'sense' its position, and (b) realign with the apple. Of course there is the pulling of strings too but I believe that is transfer of energy besides the philosophical construct. I think the difficulty here starts with the definition "weak emergence is a type of emergence in which the emergent property is amenable to computer simulation", partly because what a computer can simulate is still in development, and partly because a computer is a sum of parts and its own capabilities depend on what those parts are (E.g. WE can simply just easily add a complete mathematical model of the universe along with full decision tree to a computer, then set parameters to simulate whatever we want).Tkyoung (talk) 02:02, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
In reference to "strong emergence, in which the emergent property cannot be simulated by a computer", anything can potentially be simulated, it's just that it really needs intelligence to realize that the "trees" work together to create a "forest". For example, if you're looking at quarks, you'll never see the WWW (much less this article), which have many emergent layers between the two. Scott McNay (talk) 15:26, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
Relate is more philosophical interact more physical; Ref: "Emergence, Function and Realization", Umut Baysan, In Sophie Gibb, Robin Hendry & Tom Lancaster (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Emergence. ...Abstract: “Realization” and “emergence” are two concepts that are sometimes used to describe same or similar phenomena in philosophy of mind and the special sciences, where such phenomena involve the synchronic dependence of some higher-level states of affairs on the lower-level ones. According to a popular line of thought, higher-level properties that are invoked in the special sciences are realized by, and/or emergent from, lower-level, broadly physical, properties. So, these two concepts are taken to refer to relations between properties from different levels where the lower-level ones somehow “bring about” the higher-level ones. However, for those who specialise in inter-level relations, there are important differences between these two concepts – especially if emergence is understood as strong emergence. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight these differences.Arnlodg (talk) 15:21, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
When I scan read through the article I wonder if emergence is not too often connotated with positive things? I know emergence from the setting of the "Tree of knowledge" - first there was matter, then life like microorganisms, then organisms with a mind, then organisms with a conscious - who could have predicted that the sum of 2 single items could result into 3 iso 2. Great, hopeful, inspiring. But I'm also working on sustainability and when I read chapter 5.1.3 (Emergence in the context of) Architecture and cities, I wonder if we shouldn't put a reference to uninformed people running towards towns with completely wrong expectations, straight into slums, criminality and their demise and that of their family and kids? Or similarly economic refugees from Africa obsessed with a completely wrong image of Europe - delivering themselves to the dangers of the desert, then the Mediterranean Sea - and when arrived - some who are misguided to the next level - obsessively want to cross the North Sea to the Island that is the UK and if there would have been yet another island beyond that, I assume they would obsessively go there, because there finally would be the country of milk and honey? All that obsessive human "running like chicken without a head" no matter what - even if it costs their lives and that of their family and kids, or animals and humans in a stampede where many get killed by trampling/pressuring till suffocation and death follows - complete madness - aren't those also a form of emergence - but in a negative sense and aren't they worthwhile mentioning? Sincerely, SvenAERTS (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
Please pick a citation style and I'll harmonize it throughout the article. It seems that the article originally used footnotes, but has carried a hidden comment "Use unspaced Harvard Citations in the text: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Harvard_citation" for at least a decade. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:40, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
The initial example of a bike + rider = motion doesn't describe an emergent phenomenon of the type we're talking about. Equally you might say the parts of a TV set, put together to produce pictures and sound, is an emergent phenomenon, and it isn't. It's just a thing made of parts. Not quite the same.
It's a tricky thing and a bit ethereal and vapourous to grab hold of. But the best example is surely the classic one - an ant hill. A hill full of ants can find the shortest route to a food source. It's because the ants leave a scent trail behind them. The shortest route is the one that can be done quickest. The ants that take that route will be there and back, then off again, quicker, so will make more runs. So that trail will have more scent contributed to it, and therefore smell strongest.
If ants are wired to follow a scent trail, once it starts to smell strong enough, or otherwise wander randomly, then eventually the shortest route will be marked out, and most ants will start taking it, leaving the longer trails, or the ones that don't go anywhere, behind.
This, obviously, would not work with just one ant. But lots of ants, each one an identical unit with limited information-handling capacity, can do it. No ant holds a map of the area in his mind, or even part of one, nor any information about the trail at all. All he needs, is his nose and his scent gland. "Wander randomly. If you catch a scent, randomly decide whether to follow it, with a probability corresponding to how strong it is." is the simple rule from which accurate path-finding emerges, even though there's nothing about distance or creating a map in there. They just have to like smelling the smell, while having an urge to walk forwards. Easy enough for evolution to do, and there's another emergent phenomenon!
A group of ants does something that no single ant has the brain capacity to do. Similarly in cellular automata, "creatures" like gliders appear, even though there's nothing in Conway's simple rules about them. Or rather, there is, the whole zoo of a cellular automaton is stored in it's simple rules. They're just not obviously visible. And they only appear on a grid with enough cells working together, individually.
CA are a great example of emergence, and I think the inspiration for the phenomenon first being thought of. But they're a bit of a geek toy, and computery, and it's important to show that emergent phenomena occur in nature as well. Actually they occur in all systems that are complex, or big, enough.
Anyway... while a sprocket isn't a bicycle, it is an obvious part of one. Each part is different, and designed to work together according to the intention of the designer. Emergent phenomena occur in systems with identical parts, and no design or intention is there. They just occur. Like weather comes from air molecules. In the case of the ants, general evolutionary pressure is the driving force, but that itself has no designer or intention.
A bike + rider is not a valid example. Emergent phenomena are unexpected! Not obviously implicit from looking at the parts. They evolve into existence. Bikes don't.
Sorry for rambling a bit. I realise the ant thing is mentioned in the article already, though it's not explained fully. But whoever thought of the bike example doesn't understand emergent phenomena. It has to go. If somebody wants to use ants as a replacement example, there are explanations online that are better-written than mine. You could use weather, with gusts adding up to hurricanes. Weather is chaotic, too, chaotic systems and emergence are often deeply connected.
Some time in the future I might try replace the bike example with something bettter-written myself. I don't mind doing the work. But not if whoever wrote the bike thing is going to get territorial and just revert me, and the whole thing ends up in the hands of some ridiculous cabal of no-lives spouting WP:BLAHBLAHBLAH at me.
In the section on strong emergence and weak emergence, it says:
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.[1] The whole is other than the sum of its parts. An example from physics of such emergence is water, which appears unpredictable even after an exhaustive study of the properties of its constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen.[2] It follows 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.[3]
(Emphasis by me.)
I understand that ab initio simulations of water have not always perfectly reproduced experimental properties, but they are actually quite good and getting better (e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20821-w , https://www.pnas.org/content/114/41/10846), and also, 2 things must be remembered about them:
1) Ab initio simulations that are actually done involve much smaller amounts of matter than is usually experimented on. A single milligram (~1 mm3) of water contains 3.343×1019 molecules of water, which is already much more than could feasibly be simulated in a highly quantum-mechanically complete model. Real simulations rarely simulate more than thousands. These simulations also simulate very small amounts of times. For an extremely large-scale example, a 2020 paper reports "that a machine learning-based simulation protocol (Deep Potential Molecular Dynamics), while retaining ab initio accuracy, can simulate more than 1 nanosecond-long trajectory of over 100 million atoms per day". For another comparison, 1 picogram (~1 μm3) of water contains 33.43 billion molecules, so such a microbe-sized droplet could be simulated at a rate of about 1 nanosecond per year using this new method. It is already well-known that a conglomeration of 10 atoms behaves significantly differently than a conglomeration of 100 atoms, which behaves differently than 1000 atoms and so forth, both in experiments and in simulations, so it's really not valid to expect such simulations of to exactly predict the behavior of the much larger amounts of matter that most experimental properties are measured for. A somewhat similar, though probably less important, note is the fact that simulations usually assume completely pure samples or simple, perfectly described, mixtures. Real samples used in experiments are invariably contaminated, not just by other types of atoms or other chemical compounds, but also by various types of radiation and electromagnetic fields that cannot feasibly be avoided (or at least are not completely avoided in practice.)
2) These ab initio simulations do not actually exactly simulate all of the laws of physics that are believed to exist. The processes going on inside atomic nuclei are rarely modeled and generally not in a fully quantum-chromodynamic way when they are, because a) the complexity of fully quantum chromodynamic simulations of even fairly small atomic nuclei stretch the limits of modern computation (and even these use numerical methods) and b) because these inner workings are expected to have only very tiny effects. It's mostly just the charge, mass, position, motion, and somewhat total angular momentum of nuclei that matters. Similar considerations explain why the weak force and gravitational forces are omitted (despite the fact that electrons do interact with the weak force), and the issue with gravity in particular is compounded by the fact there currently is no quantum theory of gravity (only conjectures without experimental support). In addition, and probably most importantly, not even quantum electrodynamics is used fully, but rather certain approximations/simplifying assumptions are made in order to make the computations feasible. In any case, such situations necessarily involve highly nonlinear differential equations that simulations must solve numerically rather than analytically, and even just solving equations numerically rather than analytically is itself an approximation.
My point is that I don't think it's justified to assert that the formation of water from hydrogen and oxygen is a case of strong emergence rather than weak emergence, even if some biology book (note the citation) did that. I think this claim should at least be qualified somehow rather than just stated as a fact. I haven't read the book, though, so I don't know what points it made.DubleH (talk) 12:36, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
References
I am no expert on emergence but the translation given for Aristotle is wrong. The text is :
περὶ δὲ τῆς ἀπορίας τῆς εἰρημένης περί τε τοὺς ὁρισμοὺς καὶ περὶ τοὺς ἀριθμούς, τί αἴτιον τοῦ ἓν εἶναι; πάντων γὰρ ὅσα πλείω μέρη ἔχει καὶ μὴ ἔστιν οἷον σωρὸς τὸ πᾶν [10] ἀλλ᾽ ἔστι τι τὸ ὅλον παρὰ τὰ μόρια, ἔστι τι αἴτιον, ἐπεὶ καὶ ἐν τοῖς σώμασι τοῖς μὲν ἁφὴ αἰτία τοῦ ἓν εἶναι τοῖς δὲ γλισχρότης ἤ τι πάθος ἕτερον τοιοῦτον. ὁ δ᾽ ὁρισμὸς λόγος ἐστὶν εἷς οὐ συνδέσμῳ καθάπερ ἡ Ἰλιὰς ἀλλὰ τῷ ἑνὸς εἶναι.
which is translated by Hugh Tredennick ( Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1933, 1989) as
With regard to the difficulty which we have described in connection with definitions and numbers, what is the cause of the unification? In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause ; inasmuch as even in bodies sometimes contact is the cause of their unity, and sometimes viscosity or some other such quality.But a definition is one account, not by connection, like the Iliad , but because it is a definition of one thing.
This seems to be quite different to the translation given in the footnote which is unsourced: "Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 8.6.1045a: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 greater than the sum of the parts.
Unless anyone objects I will change the translation in the footnote. But it seems to me that he is not explicitly saying the whole is greater than the sum of the parts but rather that there is a cause why the parts cohere into a whole.
Any comments?
Seneca_2007 (talk) 00:57, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
My only comment is that I would like the opinion of someone who can actually read Ancient Greek. Obviously, the professional translators should be most trusted, but I know a bit about linguistics, and I know that looking at a translation, no matter how good, does not always give the same insight as looking at the way something is said in the original language. Translators make choices, and someone who can read both the translation and the original better than just looking up each word and its inflection separately (though that's also a very valid option) can understand the nature of those choices, rather than just the nature of how the words of the English translation look like they mean to us with our understandings of English.DubleH (talk) 12:56, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
I want to prepare a sentence or paragraph about emergence related to the emergence of memory in the brain. It goes something like this. Draw your favorite animal and compare it to google images of it. Often quite a sobering and humblefying endeavour, right? Humans really have to train hard to be any good at it - we call these people "artists, painters, etc.". Computers with their 1 and zero storage system are very good at reproducing images; but they are terrible at giving meaning and flow. When you google your favorite animal, computers don't know what info you need about the animal, so they just "spew" a bunch of info and hope the relevant stuff is in there and you have to pick it out then: pictures of them, maybe you are interested in some faq. The computers have no clue of the "flow (of a conversation)" in which you are and what part of the info you need in your flow. Our brains however are very good at "meaning" and "flow" and "emergence". Our brains don't "store" memories as computers do. Just zoom in to the grey matter of the brain, there's no 1 and zero storage system. It's neural cells with an average 7000 connections to other neurons and they constantly update that wiring. Our brains make us re-live experiences - and can link us to and relive the relevant sub-experiences, schema's and sub-schema's, abstracts of experiences of you meeting that favorite animal: what shape did it have, typical colors, skin, movement, speed of movement and rotation, typical acceleration-deceleration patterns, size, smell, typical environment it is associated with, temperature, time of day, sounds, relevant context, lexemes, ontology, etc. All your senses have been involved and both pre-existing neural pathways have been used and reinforced, new ones have been made and fore sure new and shorter, more relevant links to other neural schema's have been induced to grow. And from all that emerges what we experience as "memory" and what we "know". You know what your favorite animal is, you can talk about it passionately, in a flow of a conversation without being overloaded by irrelevant information or overcome by irrelevant emotions for the flow you are in. But you cannot draw it. :), That's all I have time for. Looking forward collaborating on this. SvenAERTS (talk) 22:40, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
There is a lot of ambiguity about the interpretation of the definition of emergence.
The current definition of emergence contains the following elements:
The definition is so broad that as a consequence almost everything in this world is emergent, because all objects or phenomena we encounter are composed of different parts who has different properties than the collective constituent . It is virtually impossible to find an elementary object/phenomenon that is not composed. Even at the smallest (Planck) scale emergent phenomena occur (such as space and time).
Other problems are:
At the moment I don't have a conclusive solution for solving this problem. Therefore, I think it makes sense to include these issues in a "Criticism" section. Ypan1944 (talk) 14:35, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
This section was created by Ypan1944 last month without citations [5]. I see that a "no citations" tag was added recently. That's a good start toward addressing the problem. But see also e.g. WP:CRITICISM. It's unclear to me that the article benefits from this section, which appears to be a laundry list of editor WP:OR. Am I off base here? Ypan1944, do you have citations to support each of these claims? I'm posting here rather than WP:BOLDly doing the deed on my own initiative because I know that this is a relatively high-traffic page. If anyone objects to cutting this section, let's discuss. Generalrelative (talk) 19:08, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
I got a copy of Corning's paper, which appears to be the main source actually discussing emergence (and not just providing examples which wikipedia editors then draw WP:SYNTH conclusions from as examples of emergence). Corning largely rejects the definition of emergence as self-organization, considers table salt and water to be emergent phenomena by his own definition, and largely argues in the paper that the whole concept is meaningless. And yet, somehow his arguments were carefully cited to draw essentially the opposite conclusions!
As such, I'm removing most of the article. This is a topic that easily begets nonsense, so at a bare minimum we should have a WP:RS claim made for every example of emergence, and ideally an academic one from a specialist, rather than trying to draw our own conclusions or blindly citing any misconceptions in popular media on the topic. - car chasm (talk) 16:43, 10 May 2023 (UTC)