Introduction to "emergence"
Motivations, basic ideas, potentials, problems
Motivations
Similar patterns/properties exist in systems at quite different scales and having quite different constituents
It frequently proves difficult to account for the patterns/properties of systems in terms of the properties of the individual constituents alone
Many systems seem to display patterns/properties despite significant disturbance of individual constituents
Many systems display variations in patterns/properties in lieu of external causes (cf traffic jams) or internal directors (cf slime molds and flocking). The search for either may lead one down blind research alleys.
Many seems seem, on exploration, to be more complex than they "need to be"
It also seems difficult to account for systems in lieu of a designer, but accounting for them that way leads to an infinite regress in explanation (and may lead one down blind research alleys).
John Coway's "Game of Life"
Basic ideas
Distributed systems, interactions as critical as component properties, and frequently bidirectional
No "conductor" nor other external director (see Game of Life)
No "architect" nor other external designer (see Game of Life)
Self organization
Even simple distributed systems may require simulation to determine what properties they will exhibit
Randomness may play an important role in both exhibited properties and in the evolution of systems
Computer modelling as a new microscope/telescope, allowing one to see things impossible to see otherwise
A broader perspective that opens new directions for exploration of particular systems and system phenomena that have proved difficult to make sense of previously
A broader perspective that integrates understandings of a wide variety of phenomena
A new set of "rules" that apply generally across a wide variety of phenomena at all scales
Problems
Demonstrated in particular cases but still need to better define the broader perspective, add to cases, explore limits
Difficulty in understanding how to go from one level of organization to another, particularly inanimate to animate and animate to conscious
A few likely cases, but remains to see whether broadly so
