Journal on Policy & Complex Systems Vol. 2, Issue 2, Fall 2015 | Page 95

Journal on Policy and Complex Systems
1 . The Continuing Mystery of Emergence 1

Since Aristotle noted , “ The whole is more than the sum of its parts ” ( Aristotle ,

1989 , Meta 10f-1045a ) emergence has seemed like a free lunch : you put a bunch of things together and something new ( and surprising , interesting , and useful ) may pop out .
Emergence is one of a web of ideas associated with what has come to be known as complex systems . According to Google ’ s Ngram website , 2 usage of the terms complex system and emergence peaked just before the turn of the century . 3 At about the same time , philosophers like Jerry Fodor and philosophically minded computer scientists like Cosma Shalizi described emergence in quasi-mysterious — and even explicitly mysterious — terms .
Molto Mysterioso . Damn near everything we know about the world suggests that unimaginably complicated to-ings and fro-ings ... at the extreme micro-level manage somehow to converge on stable macro-level properties . The “ somehow ” really is entirely mysterious . How can macro-level stabilities supervene on a buzzing , blooming confusion of micro-level interactions ? ... Why is there anything except physics ? Well , I admit that I do not know why . I do not even know how to think about why . I expect to figure out why there is anything except physics the day before I figure out why there is anything at all ( Fodor 1997 ). 4
Someplace where quantum field theory meets general relativity and atoms and void merge into one another , we may take to be given — as an empirical fact , not susceptible to any meaningful explanation — the rules of the game . But the rest of the observable , exploitable order in the universe — benzene molecules , PV = nRT , snowflakes , cyclonic storms , kittens , cats , young love , middle-aged remorse , financial euphoria accompanied with acute gullibility , prevaricating candidates for public office , tapeworms , jet-lag , and unfolding cherry blossoms — where do all these regularities come from ? They are connected to the fundamental physics somehow , just like pawn formations and end games are connected to the rules of chess , but how do you get from one to the other ? Call this emergence if you like — it is a fine-sounding word , and brings to mind southwestern creation myths in an oddly apt way . However , doing so just marks a mystery , without explaining anything ( Shalizi , 1998 ).
A decade later , emergence had sunk from mystery to muddle . The following is from the ‘ Introduction ’ to Bedau and Humphreys ( 2008 ).
1 The first three sections of this paper talk about emergence as traditionally understood . For simplicity , I use the term emergence rather than traditional emergence . 2 See http :// bit . ly / 1IHWZal . 3 By 2008 , the last year for which data is available , usage had declined by about 1 / 3 . 4 Fodor did not use the term emergence , but the phenomena he describes are associated with it .
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