Talk:Emergence

Moved from Talk page of original "Emergent behaviour" article (Lexor 22:31 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)):

• please* don't link every second word of this... it will become unreadable...and consider this a draft - literature needed! -- OlofE 21:57 Sep 23, 2002 (UTC)

Water example

The water example is interesting, but I don't think it really qualifies as an emergent property. The sense of emergence is that the property emerges from a large aggregation. Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom can combine to form water, but the properties of water do not emerge from the combination. The combination is actually a radically different thing, due to the quantum and wave characteristics of the electrons involved.

The ant example is the perfect example. If you have two or three ants, there is not much change; they may interact, they may not. If you add another one or two, still not much change. Twenty more ants, still not much change. If you keep adding ants until there is a large colony, then the colony will have a behavior that is at a higher level of description than the behavior of the ants themselves, who will continue to exhibit many of the same behaviors as in the past. The properties of the colony's behavior will be different from the aggregate behavior of the smaller groups of ants. Hu 19:49, 2004 Nov 17 (UTC)

I agree. The fact that corrosive oxygen and combustive hydrogen make water is exceedingly cool, but it is not an emergent phenomenon. I'm removing this. Jmeppley 22:11, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The water "example" was re-entered by another anonymous IP address, without comment or explanation here. After a little thought I removed it, per this discussion. Hu 00:49, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

External Links

The external links are getting out of hand. First, the links should be useful text, not just a url. An interview with Steven Johnson, author of Emergence not just http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/02/22/johnson.html. See Wikipedia:Describe_external_links

Second, my sense of what wikipedia should look like is still forming, but I don't think it should be a clearing house for all related links. I don't think we need to link to every online book or story about emergence. I'm removing three links. http://mind-brain.com/emergence/ doesn't link to anything. http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-b.html is already mentioned in the references. http://www.collacomp.com is a software company and offers no information on emergence. Jmeppley 22:06, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Water explanation

I added the water example (the second time, anyway) based on a few independent factors.

1a) My Educational Background. I learned of water as an example of emergence in chemistry classes from high school through college (including my 10th grade Chem textbook, for which I can track down the info if necessary). Sorry for the lack of comment initially - I merely thought it was a textbook example and therefore uncontroversial.

1b) I did college work in systems theory and remember a few resources (Britannica being the most prestigious) that use water as an example. I checked with Britannica Online after seeing critiques here, and their visible excerpt includes water.

2) Change. The very notion that "the combination is actually a radically different thing, due to the quantum and wave characteristics of the electrons involved," is important. It means that the property of anti-flammability literally "emerges" from a specific electronics of water. This property is not, as we can all agree, fundamental to the constituents separately, or even a property of a mixture of the constituents.

3a) Fractals (The book Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop is most straightforwardly thorough on this topic). While I appreciate Hu's critique (lack of aggregation of interactions in the water example), I think Hu's definition confuses the fractal nature of complex systems with the more fundamental notion of emergence. Emergence is an example of any single iteration of a fractal (or complex) interaction. Complex systems are systems in which fractal interactions occur. Therefore, an emergent result of "a specific interaction of hydrogen and oxygen molecules" is water. An emergent result of "water molecules interacting with each other below freezing" is its lower density as a solid than as a liquid. Each step listed is emergent and complex. The aggregated result ("hydrogen and oxygen molecules specifically interacting" is "ice's lower density than liquid water") is rather a complex system consisting of multiple iterations of fractal interactions. This aggregation of iterations is complex, while each iteration is emergent (and, as a result, complex).

3b) In other words (using a simple perfect 2D fractal), emergence tells us 1 + 1 = 4, OR 1 + 1 + 1 = 16, OR 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 64, etc. Complexity tells us 1 + 1 = 4, AND ALSO that 1 + 1 + 1 = 16, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 64, etc, as we add levels of interaction. Complex systems are, typically, fractal interactions in aggregate. The individual iterations of interactions are complex; but fundamentally, they are emergent. Why is each level emergent? Because 4 is not the sum of 1 and 1. It is the fractal result of 1 and 1 interacting. The extra sum literally emerges from the way 1 and 1 interact. If it emerges, it is thus emergent.

4) Scope of Change. With all due respect to Hu, the following comment is technically valid, but not relevant to emergence. (Admittedly, it is vaguely relevant to complexity as a field of study, in terms of self-organization... But our focus is narrower here.)

"The ant example is the perfect example. If you have two or three ants, there is not much change; they may interact, they may not. If you add another one or two, still not much change. Twenty more ants, still not much change. If you keep adding ants until there is a large colony, then the colony will have a behavior that is at a higher level of description than the behavior of the ants themselves, who will continue to exhibit many of the same behaviors as in the past."

If we remember the butterfly effect, the amount of self-organization to create a tornado/tropical storm is not dramatic UNTIL the number of interactions becomes large enough that one iteration of seemingly minor interaction drastically changes that number. Can remove the butterfly because it is apparently insignificant? No. The fact (of fractal interactions) matters more than the scope of results during any one iteration.

4a) Emergence is when the result of actions is not inherent in the actions or the actors. This is true with the butterfly effect. It is true of water. It is also true of the ant colony. However, the scope of the change only matters in complex systems when discussing rate of self-organization. The fact of the change (regardless of rates) matters in emergence. Nevertheless, the scope of change is still significant when we address H₂ and O₂ being flammable, and H₂ being anti-flammable. In one single iteration, there is a significant change in properties. So, while Hu's premise fails, water still fits its test.

Hu's Test

Now, if I were to agree with all Hu's premises, water still applies. I will borrow Hu's phrasing to illustrate how. Original quotation: "The properties of the colony's behavior will be different from the aggregate behavior of the smaller groups of ants." Rephrased: "The properties of water's behavior will be different from the aggregate behavior of the groups of oxygen molecules, hydrogen molecules, or a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen molecules." This is true. The properties of water's behavior are different from the aggregate of all the hydrogen, or all the oxygen, or all of both. Differently approached, let's ask if water fits each leg of Hu's test: Does something emerge? Yes. Is the thing that emerges different from the smaller groups of the constituents (or even, in water's case, the constituents together)? Yes. Is the emergent result significantly different in terms of properties not exhibited by the constituents (or their aggregates)? Yes. So, if Hu's premises were applicable to emergence, water would still fit. Emergence is more basic, so we can be assured that water belongs.

The Basic Point

As we focus on emergence (that single instance in which something "emerges"), we can easily ignore the aggregate of interactions. That said, this doesn't mean the ant colony example is wrong. The ant colony slowly becomes more complex at first, as interactions between ants aggregate; but the aggregation (of interactions) is simply re-iteration (fractally) of emergent interactions. There is a "tipping point" where the number of ants becomes so that self-organization occurs rapidly, but speed and scope are not relevant to that fact.

The long and short of it is that complex systems depend on fractal interaction, whether one iteration or more. Emergence is the single instance of a fractal iteration. Or, emergence is when the result of actions is not inherent in the actions or actors themselves. Or, emergence is when the result is more than the sum of its parts.

I apologize for the length of this message; I simply want to be thorough. Also, I do not want to re-add the water section without response, so I will leave the section as it is. I look forward to a hearty discussion.

Zenter 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I still haven't digested it, but I'll try to explain my position in more detail than in my earlier, slightly snarky (sorry), comment.

My background is physics/math and I recently started working in ecology. My initial introduction to emergence was in a class on complex systems that used the Stephen Johnson book as a text book. The Impression I get from him is that emergence is a property of systems with many simple components. Usually the components are all identical or extremely similar. Usually, the components are connected loosely, the total effect of many components multiplied by many weak interactions between the components results in emergent, self-organizing properties. So, I would agree with Hu. But I used words like "usually" because I'm not 100% sure of the formal definitions here and I associate self-organization and emergence.

The one comment I'll make at this point (with limited research so far) on Zenter's post is on the Britannica example. From a quick survey of online definitions of emergence (google: define emergence) I noticed that a few places did use water as an example.

• http://smile.jcon.org/soft/product/ref/entry/e/Emergence.html

and I also found the following:

• http://www.masterliness.com/a/Phase.matter.htm

These examples speak to liquidity (and phases in general) as an emergent property of water that is not apparent when only a few molecules are present. This is a very different concept than the example that started this discussion. It is not clear to me which of these phenomena the Britannica article is referring to.

For me, a key component of emergence (in the complex systems sense) is that the individual pieces aren't changing, their actions just sum differently when there are more than a critical number. If you have 20 water molecules, each molecule is indistinguishable from any water molecule in a teaspoon of water, yet the fact that there are so many molecules in the latter case, changes the way the system behaves. On the atomic scale there is a difference between an oxygen atom in water and an oxygen atom in O₂. Jmeppley 19:52, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I apologize for the length of this message; I simply want to be thorough. Also, I do not want to re-add the water secton without response, so I will leave the section as it is. I look forward to a hearty discussion.

Zenter 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

Hu writes: Thank you Zenter for a detailed response. My interest in emergence comes from my interest in intelligence, artificial intelligence, and consciousness; so I will move to discussing that as an example. In my understanding of this, emergence is the jumping up to another level of description beyond what was sufficient to describe the pre-emergent system.

In the case of the formation of water, the level of description remains the same, i.e. physical and chemical. The properties of oxygen, hydrogen, and water can all be measured with variations of the same instruments. The fact that two are gases and one a liquid at room temperature is just a matter of degree (literally!). The flammability of the hydrogen (when in presence of oxygen) and the non-flammability of water are just stations along a dimension of qualification that pre-exists. Some elements and compounds have flammability, others do not. The non-flammability does not so much emerge as it is acquired. Another strike against the formation-of-water model is that the units are changed. The nuclei may be the same, but the electron clouds are radically different.

If we look at the action of uni-cellular organisms like amoebae, we see the basics of animal life: seeking and consumption of food, avoidance of harmful environments, and reproduction. As we increase the complexity of the animals up through invertebrates and vertebrates, the aggregations of cells exhibit more complex forms of the behaviors, but fundamentally the animals still seek and consume food, avoid harm and reproduce. However when we arrive at human beings, new levels of description are necessary. Descriptions like "government", "religion", "wiki", "superstar", and "music" are just a few of a myriad of new concepts that can be applied. These are dimensions of qualification that do not exist in simpler animals. We can say a chimpanzee does not have religion only because non-human animals do not have religion. Religion was never an issue until the human species arrived. There is nothing inherent in human brain cells compared to chimpanzee brain cells, the units are essentially the same, but yet in the transition, something dramatically different is emergent. Hu 22:47, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

Zenter writes: Hi... In composing the responses, I spent some time sitting on them, re-writing them, thinking some more... Sorry, again, for the length.

I want to take a couple steps back. We are not defining our terms/perspectives/assumptions before plowing forth. (Ex: I don't understand the precise meaning of "levels of description," nor its relevance)

My Perspective

The reason why I studied systems theory in college was because I majored in religion, specifically Buddhism. In all Buddhist schools, there is a rejection of souls. This is because of various reasons, most important being that an unchanging eternal "self" is affected and makes decisions by the changing world, and thus cannot be unchanging, and thus it cannot be an eternal, unchanging self.

Mahayana Buddhists took this a couple steps further, rejecting "selfhood," or essence, of anything in the universe (including themselves). Basically, they were rejecting a philosophy similar to Platonism. Their argument is logical reduction: where is the "tableness" within a table? Is it alone in the flat board? Or the legs? No. The "tableness" comes from multiple sources: the board, the legs, and me working together. The "tableness" arises co-dependently. If I sat on a table, I negate its tableness. It now has chairness. However, if I chopped this table in half, so it could not stand, it would have neither tableness nor chairness. The form thus is important, as is my use of it.

The same question is asked of a river (what is a river? where is its riverness?) and fire (what is fire? where is its fireness?). The result is always the same: an uncertain place somewhere in between all the actors working in concert. The lone table, in its own universe, is no more a table than I am a person in my own universe. Mahayana Buddhists typically call that unstable/uncertain interdependent creation "dependent arising" or "dependent co-arising."

Having learned a great deal of science, I immediately saw a connection between this philosophy and the notion of emergence. Heck, I thought, the word "arise" and "emerge" are synonyms! Emergence, therefore, is when something arises co-dependently. Predictability and statistical probability were less important than the simple fact of interdependent arising. It is predictable that when I hit a pool ball, it moves. That does not mean, to me, that is not emergent. It simply is a really boring instance of emergence that depends on me, the pool ball and the cue. Bu, just because something is boring or predictable does not mean it is not emergent.

What is Not Emergent?

So what's not emergent? Independent events. Let's say I support a team that makes it to the championship. Let's also say that at around the same time, there is an important election. I want my team to win, but I REALLY want my candidate to win. So I make a deal with the fates: I will sacrifice my team for my political candidate. My team ends up winning. Does that mean my candidate will automatically lose? No. When my candidate loses, can say that this was an interdependent interaction between myself, my team, and my candidate? No. That my team won and my candidate lost are independent events that I connect. So, in my mind, there is a connection, but the two events have no bearing on each other. That is because there is no interaction.

Basically, to me, emergence is what happens during an interaction. There is some sort of exchange. This conversation we are having is emergent. It depends on you, me, common language, common interests, and wikispace, among many other factors. All these factors meet in an uncertain creation of a conversation.

It reminds me Schrodinger's Cat. There is a level of uncertainty built-in to all sciences, and however minute that level of uncertainty is, it exists. That an interaction results in something that was not "there" before is enough to warrent the label "emergence." The reason is, emergence is (to me) the most basic building block of all sciences, and I think the definition should be extremely inclusive.

What is Emergent?

What is emergent? Almost everything interactive to the point of mundanity or uselessness. Why? Like the butterfly effect, a mundane interaction can have non-mundane effects. Let's take a snippet of a gene of a made-up harmless bacterium.

ATTGGCAGGTACC

Now let's make a point mutation.

ATTGGCAGGTGCC

This mutation was a result of random interaction with basic light radiation. The result of such mutations is usually harmless, and therefore, usually not worth our attention. But here, however, we get a deadly bacterium that attacks the lungs and is also resistant to most forms of antibacteria. This new bacterium is the emergent result of a random-chance interaction. But so are ALL the harmless ones. We cannot base our label of"emergent" on whether the event is significant (to us) or not. This was my previous argument regarding "scope."

An added issue is entropy. My understanding is that emergence moves against entropy. We take hydrogen and oxygen and a lightning bolt, and these three entropically stable things organize into something else with different chemical and physical properties, against entropy. If it moves against the flow of entropy, it is complex. As for self-organization, I suppose it stands to reason that as long as there isn't widespread self-organization, it would be difficult to argue in favor of a single point mutation, single molecular reaction, being emergent. I guess my perspective is a little less rigorous - I am not forced to ask, "Is this significant enough?" But the upside of my perspective is that there is less judgement and, more simply, a switch - "Does something change versus entropy?" I am trying to keep "me" out of the definition as much as possible, because "I" bring a perspective and biases, while a switch does not.

Which leads me to...

Response to Hu, Jmeppley

I want to thank Jmeppley and Hu for taking the time to explain their points of view. I think I agree (or at least understand) where you're coming from, Jmeppley. Most of my disagreement is with Hu, it seems. Any disagreement I have with Jmeppley is embedded in my larger rebuttal to Hu.

Hu, I agree that human concepts/conceptualizing is emergent. I also think the cooperation of various structures (from organelles to organs) within a living thing is something that leads to an emergent "single being." "I" cannot be without my heart, nor my heart without "me." The heart is not "me," but there is no "me" without the heart. This interdependence is a great example of emergence. The heart works in a specific manner in relation to other things, seemingly independent. The result, however, is a seemless, single, "me." This is consistent with your "city" example in the definition. I also think this is consistent with my "water" example. (O₂ works in relation to 2H₂ to result in a two single, seemless, H₂O molecules.)

Anthropocentrism

As I said above, I don't understand the relevance of "levels of description." I also do not know why observation based on the same schema (ie physical and chemical properties) is automatically dispensed as "not emergent." I don't see the form of observation as crucial to emergence. The fact that something occurs interdependently to create a result that is unique is, to me, the essence of emergence. That it is unique in the same way other things are also unique does not make it any less emergent. I feel like this is a step to "value-judging" events rather than keeping human value out of the discussion.

For example, Hu says: "As we increase the complexity of the animals up through invertebrates and vertebrates, the aggregations of cells exhibit more complex forms of the behaviors, but fundamentally the animals still seek and consume food, avoid harm and reproduce. However when we arrive at human beings, new levels of description are necessary." Are humans really that special? This is dangerous anthropocentrism, from my perspective. I would lump the fact that we have religion and government in the "consume food, avoid harm, reproduce" category, as long as we are lumping things like organ specialization, immune responses, and the fact of sexuality into that category. The differences in "level of description" is a construct of the mind, not of reality. All human behavior can be reduced to the same things that all living behavior can be reduced to. We simply have greater insight on human behavior. But, if religion and government are special, why are they more so than a birds flocking, or whales using sonar? Where would the fact that juvenile bottle-nose dolphins masturbate fit in? Or that many invertebrates have a two-stage life cycle?

There's an implicit argument within your larger argument, Hu. It is that humans are, in essence, the "greatest" creatures, the rulers of the world, sort of the "end of evolution." It seems that other evolutionary changes are "not emergent," that humans are a leap above other creatures. In some old religions of the near east, the universe was arranged this way, with less similar creatures at the bottom, and we can work our way up to animals closest to us. Then there is this huge gap between the most "complex animal" and humans, often described as "a gap as big as the one between gods and humans." We humans are the intermediaries between the created world and the cosmic divine. Obviously, evolution and the development of all the flora and fauna on earth was more complicated. So, while I agree that religion and government are emergent, it is not because they are special social structures overlayed on top of survival. Indeed, they are a result of and purveyor of survival, like other things that have arisen through interaction of creatures (such as flocking, sexuality, and immune response - results and purveyors all, of survival).

This sort-of "judgement" in your (Hu's) line of reasoning scares me. Emergence is a property in the same way evolution is a property - there isn't a distinct line where we can suddenly say "now it has evolved." There are small steps, each significant to the process, each building on the last (see my previous fractal argument). I am not the judge of what is "worth it," and neither is Hu or anyone else. Until "level of description" is defined in a way that meets scientific rigor (in all sciences), I am extremely wary of using it scientifically. I would also warn against the dangers of dismissing something as insignificant or irrelevant - it is that sort of thinking that allowed AIDS to become the epidemic it is.

Additional Thoughts

I have done some research to try to shed additional light on the issue. It has rather shed additional confusion. The debate we are having can be seen in the JS Mill-methane example in link 3 below. My sense of understanding is more like link 5 below.

1) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/#2

2) http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/emergent-properties.html

3) http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/emergence.html

4) http://www.stewdean.com/alife/emergence.html

5) http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/general/bldef_emergent.htm

This all leads me to believe that our discussion is extremely relevant, because it actually appears to be at the forefront of complexity science. I suppose this would be a good time to call in some folks at the Santa Fe Institute.

Again, apologies for the length. This took me two months of reflection, but I think we're actually getting somewhere. I can't wait to see your responses! Zenter 17:36, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My contention with Zenter at this point (you've changed my mind to some degree) is that I still don't think your water example is a classic example of emergence. I won't tell you that the properties of water are not emergent. They do emerge from the combination of Oxygen and Hydrogen.

My impression of the article is that it is primarily discussing the scientific field of emergence. Part of our problem is that the field came into to being only recently and it's boundaries are not yet determined. The initial study of emergence arose (emerged? :-P) from the realization that there were a class of natural phenomena that had defied explanation because anthropocentricly inclined researchers were looking for the control centers. In many of these cases someone had an aha moment where they realized that there didn't have to be a control center. This idea then spread rapidly and was applied to many other natural phenomena and soon people saw parallels in many other systems both natural and artifical. The question we seem to be debating is how far to extend the comparisons.

My opinion is that Zenter's water example fits the dictionary definition of emergent, but does not completely fall into the realm envisioned when the term emergence was coined. Of course, I'm pretty sure that there is not a single field of study that has not had it's boundaries shift over time. I still feel that an important component of the essence of the original idea of emergence is that the new properties are apparent only when numbers are sufficiently large. (e.g. a few fireflies in the same tree will blink out of phase with each other, but get a few hundred in the tree and the whole tree will blink in unison.)

There is definitely some synergy (wow, did I just use that word) between the study of emergence and the philosophical ideas of <<fill_in_the_blank>>ness (tableness, chairness, etc). It might not be a bad idea to add a section on the philosophical aspects of the study of emergence. Does anyone know if any philosophies used the word emergent extensively before emergence became vogue? If so, there should definitely be a section (or possibly separate page) on the philosophy of it.

I agree with Zenter that Hu's arguments are unnecessarily anthropocentric, but I believe that his heavy use of human examples comes as much from his neuroscience background as much as an innate human tendency to see ourselves as the classic example of just about anything. That the brain distinction could have just as easily have been made between rats and earthworms as humans and other mammals.

Anyway, maybe we should wind down the arguments and begin a discussion about whether or how to reinstate the article. While I would not include the example in this article if I had complete editorial control, I could not argue against including it in a discussion of emergent properties, as long as there was some clarification or concession about the non-complex-system-ness of it.

I for got to sign off anf I have one more thought. I agree with Zenter that what he is calling "emergence" is at the heart of all science, but I don't agree that that idea should be called "emergence". I think that is the root of our disagreement. Anyway, I'm really enjoying the discussion. -john

Jmeppley 18:10, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Zenter writes: I agree! This is an interesting discussion. I think the philosophical "field"/perspective that basically agrees with my "dependent arising" perspective is called nominalism. And they don't use the word "emergent," sorry Jmeppley. At the very least, they concur on many points. For instance, they critique the notion of __ness, because things are defined, as they say, "in relation to." Green has no meaning except in relation to other colors.

Nominalists are not just accepted by the philosophical community, though. People who believe that there is an absolute moral (and therefore physical*) structure to the universe call this point of view, pejoratively, "(moral) relativism." They have been known to associate nominalism/relativism with nihilism, because of the lack of absolutes. In fact, nominalism is as far from nihilism as it is from materialism (or realism). This is sort of cutting-edge philosophy stuff, as it relates to post-modernism and post-post-modernism. What's fascinating is that these arguments taking place now in western philosophy are mirroring, very closely, what Buddhists argued about over 2000 years ago, which is why I find all that stuff I studied relevant to our discussion.

* A common phenomenon in philosophy is that the physical and moral worlds are dependent on one another - because if the physical world is created (by a creator), then it stands to reason that the metaphysical-moral world is created as well. If not, then morals are up in the air.

Anyway, this leads me to a couple questions: Is emergence a field? If so, exactly what does it study? As far as I knew, it was a methodological perspective, a way of understanding the systems of the universe (much like Darwinism in biology). My understanding of emergence is less strict because the idea has implications in many fields, regardless of where it started. In Schrodinger's "What is Life?", the book that basically started the fields of molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics, he tried to define that strange anti-entropic principle of life. I think he may have used the word "emerges," but without all the baggage we're bringing! Maybe we need another name for things which go "uphill" against entropy, as you said, Jmeppley, but we don't have it yet, and I think emergence is presently the best fit. Basically, I think the dictionary definition is the best one.

Maybe a larger-scale re-organization of the page is in order. There's the simple definition at the top, including water. Then, "Emergence is most often used when studying complex systems, and it describes larger systemic anmolies which emerge against entropic principles." Examples like the early computer science "boids" experiment, ants, etc, can be cited. Then we can refer to philosophical congruencies, such as nominalism and Buddhism. At my university, my professor of Buddhism, a sociology professor (with extensive philosophy background), and a physics professor discuss the convergence of complexity and mahayana and wittgenstein all the time. If it's happening in academia, maybe we can bring that inter-disciplinary view to the wiki.

Anyway, until we decide if we re-organize, I can live with caveats. It goes against my instinct, but I'd let it go until we are able to sort out whether emergence is itself "field-dependent," and whether the page should be re-organized.

Zenter 01:35, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Gaia paragraph removed

I yanked most of the recently added paragraph:

"Emergent properties arise when a complex system reaches a combined threshold of diversity, organisation, and connectivity. The property itself is totally unpredictable, utterly unprecedented, and represents a new level of the sytems evolution. An example of emergent properties on a universal scale are energy, from which matter emerged, from which life emerged, from which conciousness emerged. This is the stage that the earth has reached through us and other concious beings, such as the whales and dolphins in particular. That we have self-reflective conciousness,ie we are concious that we are concious (ditto dolphins etc), could be interpreted to be a transitional stage between the emergent property of conciousness and the next. Providing that we humans maintain our increasing diversity, organisation, and connectivity, and do not significantly degrade the diversity etc, of the rest of life on earth, then the next emergent property in the energy-matter-life-conciousness evolution will come forth. That is likely to occur on a planetry scale, and gaia will become!"

It starts out rather well (imho), but then gets awfully emotional and includes some questionable facts. I put the first two sentences in the emergent properties section and removed the rest. I'm not sure it belongs here, and if it does, it needs to be reworked. Does anyone think it should come back? Jmeppley 04:27, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Zenter writes: Jmeppley, I agree that the whole Gaia thing is too much. Emergence is not so, shall we say, driven, to get some next level of understanding. It is, pun intended, more complex. I think this piece relates back to the idea of emergence having some divine purpose, which I don't trust as a systemic descriptor of the universe. Also, I'm troubled with the inclusion of "represents a new level of systems evolution." This doesn't tell me anything because I don't know what "level" or "systems evolution" mean - I am as concerned about it here as I am above, in the water discussion. It conveys a sort of "drivenness" that I would try to avoid. Zenter 17:40, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)