Emergence

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Emergence

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence


occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that
its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when
they interact in a wider whole.

Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative


levels and of complex systems. For instance, the
phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent
property of chemistry and physics.

In philosophy, theories that emphasize emergent properties


have been called emergentism.[1]

In philosophy
Philosophers often understand emergence as a claim about
the etiology of a system's properties. An emergent property of
a system, in this context, is one that is not a property of any The formation of complex symmetrical and
component of that system, but is still a feature of the system fractal patterns in snowflakes exemplifies
emergence in a physical system.
as a whole. Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950), one of the first
modern philosophers to write on emergence, termed this a
categorial novum (new category).

Definitions
This concept of emergence dates from at least the time of
Aristotle.[2] The many scientists and philosophers[3] who have
written on the concept include John Stuart Mill (Composition of
Causes, 1843)[4] and Julian Huxley[5] (1887–1975).

The philosopher G. H. Lewes coined the term "emergent" in


1875, distinguishing it from the merely "resultant":

Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the


co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions
are the same – their difference, when their
directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is
clearly traceable in its components, because these A termite "cathedral" mound produced
are homogeneous and commensurable. It is by a termite colony offers a classic
example of emergence in nature.
otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding
measurable motion to measurable motion, or things
of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there
is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent
these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to the

Strong and weak emergence


Usage of the notion "emergence" may generally be subdivided into two perspectives, that of "weak
emergence" and "strong emergence". One paper discussing this division is Weak Emergence, by
philosopher Mark Bedau. In terms of physical systems, weak emergence is a type of emergence in which
the emergent property is amenable to computer simulation or similar forms of after-the-fact analysis (for
example, the formation of a traffic jam, the structure of a flock of starlings in flight or a school of fish, or the
formation of galaxies). Crucial in these simulations is that the interacting members retain their
independence. If not, a new entity is formed with new, emergent properties: this is called strong emergence,
which it is argued cannot be simulated, analysed or reduced.

David Chalmers writes that emergence often causes confusion in philosophy and science due to a failure to
demarcate strong and weak emergence, which are "quite different concepts".[8]

Some common points between the two notions are that emergence concerns new properties produced as the
system grows, which is to say ones which are not shared with its components or prior states. Also, it is
assumed that the properties are supervenient rather than metaphysically primitive.[9]

Weak emergence describes new properties arising in systems as a result of the interactions at a fundamental
level. However, Bedau stipulates that the properties can be determined only by observing or simulating the
system, and not by any process of a reductionist analysis. As a consequence the emerging properties are
scale dependent: they are only observable if the system is large enough to exhibit the phenomenon.
Chaotic, unpredictable behaviour can be seen as an emergent phenomenon, while at a microscopic scale the
behaviour of the constituent parts can be fully deterministic.

Bedau notes that weak emergence is not a universal metaphysical solvent, as the hypothesis that
consciousness is weakly emergent would not resolve the traditional philosophical questions about the
physicality of consciousness. However, Bedau concludes that adopting this view would provide a precise
notion that emergence is involved in consciousness, and second, the notion of weak emergence is
metaphysically benign.[9]

Strong emergence describes the direct causal action of a high-level system on its components; qualities
produced this way are irreducible to the system's constituent parts.[10] The whole is other than the sum of its
parts. It is argued 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.[9] Physics lacks well-established examples of
strong emergence, unless it is interpreted as the impossibility in practice to explain the whole in terms of the
parts. Practical impossibility may be a more useful distinction than one in principle, since it is easier to
determine and quantify, and does not imply the use of mysterious forces, but simply reflects the limits of our
capability.[11]

Viability of strong emergence


Some thinkers question the plausibility of strong emergence as contravening our usual understanding of
physics. Mark A. Bedau observes:
Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an
irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to
the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike
anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable
forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that
emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing.[9]

Strong emergence can be criticized for leading to causal overdetermination. The canonical example
concerns emergent mental states (M and M∗) that supervene on physical states (P and P∗) respectively. Let
M and M∗ be emergent properties. Let M∗ supervene on base property P∗. What happens when M
causes M∗? Jaegwon Kim says:

In our schematic example above, we concluded that M causes M∗ by causing P∗. So M causes
P∗. Now, M, as an emergent, must itself have an emergence base property, say P. Now we face a
critical question: if an emergent, M, emerges from basal condition P, why cannot P displace M as
a cause of any putative effect of M? Why cannot P do all the work in explaining why any alleged
effect of M occurred? If causation is understood as nomological (law-based) sufficiency, P, as M's
emergence base, is nomologically sufficient for it, and M, as P∗'s cause, is nomologically
sufficient for P∗. It follows that P is nomologically sufficient for P∗ and hence qualifies as its
cause...If M is somehow retained as a cause, we are faced with the highly implausible
consequence that every case of downward causation involves overdetermination (since P remains
a cause of P∗ as well). Moreover, this goes against the spirit of emergentism in any case:
emergents are supposed to make distinctive and novel causal contributions.[12]

If M is the cause of M∗, then M∗ is overdetermined because M∗ can also be thought of as being
determined by P. One escape-route that a strong emergentist could take would be to deny downward
causation. However, this would remove the proposed reason that emergent mental states must supervene on
physical states, which in turn would call physicalism into question, and thus be unpalatable for some
philosophers and physicists.

Objective or subjective quality


Crutchfield regards the properties of complexity and organization of any system as subjective qualities
determined by the observer.

Defining structure and detecting the emergence of complexity in nature are inherently
subjective, though essential, scientific activities. Despite the difficulties, these problems can be
analysed in terms of how model-building observers infer from measurements the computational
capabilities embedded in non-linear processes. An observer's notion of what is ordered, what is
random, and what is complex in its environment depends directly on its computational
resources: the amount of raw measurement data, of memory, and of time available for
estimation and inference. The discovery of structure in an environment depends more critically
and subtly, though, on how those resources are organized. The descriptive power of the
observer's chosen (or implicit) computational model class, for example, can be an
overwhelming determinant in finding regularity in data.[13]
The low entropy of an ordered system can be viewed as an example of subjective emergence: the observer
sees an ordered system by ignoring the underlying microstructure (i.e. movement of molecules or
elementary particles) and concludes that the system has a low entropy.[14] On the other hand, chaotic,
unpredictable behaviour can also be seen as subjective emergent, while at a microscopic scale the
movement of the constituent parts can be fully deterministic.

In science
In physics, emergence is used to describe a property, law, or phenomenon which occurs at macroscopic
scales (in space or time) but not at microscopic scales, despite the fact that a macroscopic system can be
viewed as a very large ensemble of microscopic systems.[15][16]

An emergent behavior of a physical system is a qualitative property that can only occur in the
limit that the number of microscopic constituents tends to infinity.[17]

According to Robert Laughlin,[10] for many particle systems, nothing can be calculated exactly from the
microscopic equations, and macroscopic systems are characterised by broken symmetry: the symmetry
present in the microscopic equations is not present in the macroscopic system, due to phase transitions. As a
result, these macroscopic systems are described in their own terminology, and have properties that do not
depend on many microscopic details.

Novelist Arthur Koestler used the metaphor of Janus (a symbol of the unity underlying complements like
open/shut, peace/war) to illustrate how the two perspectives (strong vs. weak or holistic vs. reductionistic)
should be treated as non-exclusive, and should work together to address the issues of emergence.[18]
Theoretical physicist PW Anderson states it this way:

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start
from those laws and reconstruct the universe. The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when
confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely
new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We
can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its
parts.[19]

Meanwhile, others have worked towards developing analytical evidence of strong emergence.
Renormalization methods in theoretical physics enable physicists to study critical phenomena that are not
tractable as the combination of their parts.[20] In 2009, Gu et al. presented a class of infinite physical
systems that exhibits non-computable macroscopic properties.[21][22] More precisely, if one could compute
certain macroscopic properties of these systems from the microscopic description of these systems, then one
would be able to solve computational problems known to be undecidable in computer science. These results
concern infinite systems, finite systems being considered computable. However, macroscopic concepts
which only apply in the limit of infinite systems, such as phase transitions and the renormalization group,
are important for understanding and modeling real, finite physical systems. Gu et al. concluded that

Although macroscopic concepts are essential for understanding our world, much of fundamental
physics has been devoted to the search for a 'theory of everything', a set of equations that
perfectly describe the behavior of all fundamental particles. The view that this is the goal of
science rests in part on the rationale that such a theory would allow us to derive the behavior of
all macroscopic concepts, at least in principle. The evidence we have presented suggests that this
view may be overly optimistic. A 'theory of everything' is one of many components necessary for
complete understanding of the universe, but is not necessarily the only one. The development of
macroscopic laws from first principles may involve more than just systematic logic, and could
require conjectures suggested by experiments, simulations or insight.[21]

In humanity
Human beings are the basic elements of social systems, which perpetually interact and create, maintain, or
untangle mutual social bonds. Social bonds in social systems are perpetually changing in the sense of the
ongoing reconfiguration of their structure.[23] An early argument (1904–05) for the emergence of social
formations can be found in Max Weber's most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism.[24] Recently, the emergence of a new social system is linked with the emergence of order from
nonlinear relationships among multiple interacting units, where multiple interacting units are individual
thoughts, consciousness, and actions.[25] In the case of the global economic system, under capitalism,
growth, accumulation and innovation can be considered emergent processes where not only does
technological processes sustain growth, but growth becomes the source of further innovations in a
recursive, self-expanding spiral. In this sense, the exponential trend of the growth curve reveals the presence
of a long-term positive feedback among growth, accumulation, and innovation; and the emergence of new
structures and institutions connected to the multi-scale process of growth. [26] This is reflected in the work
of Karl Polanyi, who traces the process by which labor and nature are converted into commodities in the
passage from an economic system based on agriculture to one based on industry.[27] This shift, along with
the idea of the self-regulating market, set the stage not only for another economy but also for another
society. The principle of emergence is also brought forth when thinking about alternatives to the current
economic system based on growth facing social and ecological limits. Both degrowth and social ecological
economics have argued in favor of a co-evolutionary perspective for theorizing about transformations that
overcome the dependence of human wellbeing on economic growth.[28][29]

Economic trends and patterns which emerge are studied intensively by economists.[30] Within the field of
group facilitation and organization development, there have been a number of new group processes that are
designed to maximize emergence and self-organization, by offering a minimal set of effective initial
conditions. Examples of these processes include SEED-SCALE, appreciative inquiry, Future Search, the
world cafe or knowledge cafe, Open Space Technology, and others (Holman, 2010[31]). In international
development, concepts of emergence have been used within a theory of social change termed SEED-
SCALE to show how standard principles interact to bring forward socio-economic development fitted to
cultural values, community economics, and natural environment (local solutions emerging from the larger
socio-econo-biosphere). These principles can be implemented utilizing a sequence of standardized tasks that
self-assemble in individually specific ways utilizing recursive evaluative criteria.[32]

Looking at emergence in the context of social and systems change, invites us to reframe our thinking on
parts and wholes and their interrelation. Unlike machines, living systems at all levels of recursion - be it a
sentient body, a tree, a family, an organisation, the education system, the economy, the health system, the
political system etc - are continuously creating themselves. They are continually growing and changing
along with their surrounding elements, and therefore are more than the sum of their parts. As Peter Senge
and co-authors put forward in the book Presence: Exploring profound change in People, Organizations and
Society, "as long as our thinking is governed by habit - notably industrial, "machine age" concepts such as
control, predictability, standardization, and "faster is better" - we will continue to recreate institutions as they
have been, despite their disharmony with the larger world, and the need for all living systems to evolve."[33]
While change is predictably constant, it is unpredictable in direction and often occurs at second and nth
orders of systemic relationality.[34] Understanding emergence and what creates the conditions for different
forms of emergence to occur, either insidious or nourishing vitality, is essential in the search for deep
transformations.

The works of Nora Bateson (https://batesoninstitute.org/nora-bateson/) and her colleagues at the


International Bateson Institute (https://batesoninstitute.org/) delves into this. Since 2012, they have been
researching questions such as what makes a living system ready to change? Can unforeseen ready-ness for
change be nourished? Here being ready is not thought of as being prepared, but rather as nourishing the
flexibility we do not yet know will be needed. These inquiries challenge the common view that a theory of
change is produced from an identified preferred goal or outcome. As explained in their paper An essay on
ready-ing: Tending the prelude to change:[34] "While linear managing or controlling of the direction of
change may appear desirable, tending to how the system becomes ready allows for pathways of possibility
previously unimagined." This brings a new lense to the field of emergence in social and systems change as
it looks to tending the pre-emergent process. Warm Data Labs (https://batesoninstitute.org/warm-data-labs/)
are the fruit of their praxis, they are spaces for transcontextual mutual learning in which aphanipoetic
phenomena unfold.[35] (Read about Aphanipoesis (https://journals.isss.org/index.php/jisss/article/view/388
7/1178) ). Having hosted hundreds of Warm Data processes with 1000s of participants, they have found
that these spaces of shared poly-learning across contexts lead to a realm of potential change, a necessarily
obscured zone of wild interaction of unseen, unsaid, unknown flexibility.[34] It is such flexibility that
nourishes the ready-ing living systems require to respond to complex situations in new ways and change. In
other words, this readying process preludes what will emerge. When exploring questions of social change,
it is important to ask ourselves, what is submerging in the current social imaginary and perhaps, rather than
focus all our resources and energy on driving direct order responses, to nourish flexibility with ourselves,
and the systems we are a part of.

Another approach that engages with the concept of emergence for social change is Theory U (https://www.
u-school.org/theory-u), where "deep emergence" is the result of self-transcending knowledge after a
successful journey along the U through layers of awareness.[36] This practice nourishes transformation at
the inner-being level, which enables new ways of being, seeing and relating to emerge. The concept of
emergence has also been employed in the field of facilitation. In Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown,
defines emergent strategies as "ways for humans to practice complexity and grow the future through
relatively simple interactions.".[37]

In linguistics, the concept of emergence has been applied in the domain of stylometry to explain the
interrelation between the syntactical structures of the text and the author style (Slautina, Marusenko,
2014).[38] It has also been argued that the structure and regularity of language grammar, or at least language
change, is an emergent phenomenon.[39] While each speaker merely tries to reach their own communicative
goals, they use language in a particular way. If enough speakers behave in that way, language is
changed.[40] In a wider sense, the norms of a language, i.e. the linguistic conventions of its speech society,
can be seen as a system emerging from long-time participation in communicative problem-solving in
various social circumstances.[41]

In technology
The bulk conductive response of binary (RC) electrical networks with random arrangements, known as the
Universal Dielectric Response (UDR), can be seen as emergent properties of such physical systems. Such
arrangements can be used as simple physical prototypes for deriving mathematical formulae for the
emergent responses of complex systems.[42] Internet traffic can also exhibit some seemingly emergent
properties. In the congestion control mechanism, TCP flows can become globally synchronized at
bottlenecks, simultaneously increasing and then decreasing throughput in coordination. Congestion, widely
regarded as a nuisance, is possibly an emergent property of the spreading of bottlenecks across a network in
high traffic flows which can be considered as a phase transition.[43] Some artificially intelligent (AI)
computer applications simulate emergent behavior.[44] One example is Boids, which mimics the swarming
behavior of birds.[45]

In religion and art


In religion, emergence grounds expressions of religious naturalism and syntheism in which a sense of the
sacred is perceived in the workings of entirely naturalistic processes by which more complex forms arise or
evolve from simpler forms. Examples are detailed in The Sacred Emergence of Nature (https://openscholars
hip.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1066&context=bio_facpubs) by Ursula Goodenough & Terrence
Deacon and Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman06/k
auffman06_index.html) by Stuart Kauffman, both from 2006, as well as Syntheism – Creating God in The
Internet Age by Alexander Bard & Jan Söderqvist from 2014 and Emergentism: A Religion of Complexity
for the Metamodern World by Brendan Graham Dempsey (2022).

Michael J. Pearce has used emergence to describe the experience of works of art in relation to contemporary
neuroscience.[46] Practicing artist Leonel Moura, in turn, attributes to his "artbots" a real, if nonetheless
rudimentary, creativity based on emergent principles.[47]

See also
Abiogenesis – Life arising from non-living matter
Anthropic principle – Hypothesis about sapient life and the universe
Connectionism – Cognitive science approach
Dual-phase evolution – Process that drives self-organization within complex adaptive
systems
Emergenesis – The result of a specific combination of several interacting genes
Emergent algorithm – Algorithm exhibiting emergent behavior
Emergent evolution – Evolutionary biology
Emergent gameplay – Aspect of gameplay
Emergent gravity – Theory in modern physics that describes gravity as an entropic force
Emergent organization
Emergentism – Philosophical belief in emergence
Externality – In economics, an imposed cost or benefit
Free will – Ability to make choices without constraints
Generative science – Study of how complex behaviour can be generated by deterministic
and finite rules and parameters
Irreducible complexity – Argument by proponents of intelligent design
Langton's ant – Two-dimensional Turing machine with emergent behavior
Law of Complexity-Consciousness – Idea that everything in the universe will converge to a
final point of unification
Libertarianism (metaphysics) – Term in metaphysics
Mass action (sociology) – Simultaneous similar behavior of many people, without
coordination
Organic Wholes of G.E. Moore – English philosopher (1873–1958)
Polytely – Problem-solving technique
Society of Mind – Book by Marvin Minsky
Superorganism – Group of synergistic organisms
Swarm intelligence – Collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems
System of systems – collection of systems that pool their capabilities to create a new, more
complex system
Spontaneous order – Spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos

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Further reading
Alexander, V. N. (2011). The Biologist's Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art,
Literature and Nature. Litchfield Park AZ: Emergent Publications.
Bateson, Gregory (1972), Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Ballantine Books, ISBN 978-0-226-
03905-3
Batty, Michael (2005), Cities and Complexity, MIT Press, ISBN 978-0-262-52479-7
Bunge, Mario Augusto (2003), Emergence and Convergence: Qualitiative Novelty and the
Unity of Knowledge, Toronto: University of Toronto Press
Chalmers, David J. (2002). "Strong and Weak Emergence" [2] (http://consc.net/papers/emerg
ence.pdf) Republished in P. Clayton and P. Davies, eds. (2006) The Re-Emergence of
Emergence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Philip Clayton & Paul Davies (eds.) (2006). The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The
Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Felipe Cucker and Stephen Smale (2007), The Japanese Journal of Mathematics, The
Mathematics of Emergence (http://ttic.uchicago.edu/~smale/papers/math-of-emergence.pdf)
Delsemme, Armand (1998), Our Cosmic Origins: From the Big Bang to the Emergence of
Life and Intelligence, Cambridge University Press
Goodwin, Brian (2001), How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity,
Princeton University Press
Hoffmann, Peter M. "Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos"
(2012), Basic Books.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979), Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Harvester
Press
Holland, John H. (1998), Emergence from Chaos to Order, Oxford University Press,
ISBN 978-0-7382-0142-9
Kauffman, Stuart (1993), The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution,
Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-507951-7
Keller, Rudi (1994), On Language Change: The Invisible Hand in Language, London/New
York: Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-07671-5
Kauffman, Stuart (1995), At Home in the Universe, New York: Oxford University Press
Kelly, Kevin (1994), Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the
Economic World (https://archive.org/details/outofcontrolnewb00kell), Perseus Books,
ISBN 978-0-201-48340-6
Krugman, Paul (1996), The Self-organizing Economy, Oxford: Blackwell, ISBN 978-1-55786-
698-1, "ISBN 0-87609-177-X"
Lewin, Roger (2000), Complexity - Life at the Edge of Chaos (second ed.), University of
Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-47654-4, "ISBN 0-226-47655-3"
Ignazio Licata & Ammar Sakaji (eds) (2008). Physics of Emergence and Organization (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20110824142338/http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/6692.htm
l), ISBN 978-981-277-994-6, World Scientific and Imperial College Press.
Marshall, Stephen (2009), Cities Design and Evolution, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-42329-
8, "ISBN 0-415-42329-5"
Morowitz, Harold J. (2002), The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex,
Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-513513-8
Pearce, Michael J. (2015), Art in the Age of Emergence., Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
ISBN 978-1-443-87057-3, "ISBN 1-443-87057-9"
Schelling, Thomas C. (1978), Micromotives and Macrobehaviour (https://archive.org/details/
micromotivesmacr00sche), W. W. Norton, ISBN 978-0-393-05701-0
Smith, John Maynard; Szathmáry, Eörs (1997), The Major Transitions in Evolution, Oxford
University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-850294-4
Smith, Reginald D. (2008), "The Dynamics of Internet Traffic: Self-Similarity, Self-
Organization, and Complex Phenomena", Advances in Complex Systems, 14 (6): 905–949,
arXiv:0807.3374 (https://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3374), Bibcode:2008arXiv0807.3374S (https://ui.
adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008arXiv0807.3374S), doi:10.1142/S0219525911003451 (https://
doi.org/10.1142%2FS0219525911003451), S2CID 18937228 (https://api.semanticscholar.or
g/CorpusID:18937228)
Solé, Ricard and Goodwin, Brian (2000) Signs of life: how complexity pervades biology,
Basic Books, New York
Jakub Tkac & Jiri Kroc (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jiri_Kroc) (2017), Cellular
Automaton Simulation of Dynamic Recrystallization: Introduction into Self-Organization and
Emergence (Software) (PDF) Cellular Automaton Simulation of Dynamic Recrystallization:
Introduction into Self-Organization and Emergence (https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio
n/316989956_Cellular_Automaton_Simulation_of_Dynamic_Recrystallization_Introduction_
into_Self-Organization_and_Emergence?ev=prf_high) "Video - Simulation of DRX" (https://
www.researchgate.net/publication/317013011_Self-Organization_Video_Sequence_Depicti
ng_Numerical_Experiments_with_Cellular_Automaton_Model_of_Dynamic_Recrystallizatio
n_with_source-code_link)
Wan, Poe Yu-ze (2011), "Emergence à la Systems Theory: Epistemological Totalausschluss
or Ontological Novelty?", Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 41 (2): 178–210,
doi:10.1177/0048393109350751 (https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0048393109350751),
S2CID 144965056 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:144965056)
Wan, Poe Yu-ze (2011), Reframing the Social: Emergentist Systemism and Social Theory (ht
tps://web.archive.org/web/20130311101716/http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409411529),
Ashgate Publishing, archived from the original (http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/978140941152
9) on 2013-03-11, retrieved 2012-02-13
Weinstock, Michael (2010), The Architecture of Emergence - the evolution of form in Nature
and Civilisation, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 978-0-470-06633-
1architectureofemergence.com (https://web.archive.org/web/20110912083233/http://www.ar
chitectureofemergence.com/)
Wolfram, Stephen (2002), A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, ISBN 978-1-57955-008-0
Young, Louise B. (2002), The Unfinished Universe, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-
508039-1

External links
"Emergence" (http://www.iep.utm.edu/emergenc). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Emergent Properties" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-e
mergent/). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Emergence (https://philpapers.org/browse/emergence) at PhilPapers
Emergence (https://www.inphoproject.org/taxonomy/2216) at the Indiana Philosophy
Ontology Project
The Emergent Universe (https://web.archive.org/web/20190321161246/http://www.emergent
universe.org/): An interactive introduction to emergent phenomena, from ant colonies to
Alzheimer's.
Exploring Emergence (https://web.archive.org/web/20021205100114/http://llk.media.mit.edu/
projects/emergence/): An introduction to emergence using CA and Conway's Game of Life
from the MIT Media Lab
ISCE group (http://isce.edu/): Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence.
Towards modeling of emergence (http://neocybernetics.com/lecture3/): lecture slides from
Helsinki University of Technology
Biomimetic Architecture – Emergence applied to building and construction (http://biomimetic-
architecture.com)
Studies in Emergent Order (http://studiesinemergentorder.org): Studies in Emergent Order
(SIEO) is an open-access journal
Emergence (http://consc.net/papers/granada.html)
DIEP (https://www.d-iep.org/diep): Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena

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