Emergent phenomena

To describe emergence and to explain what an emergent phenomenon is I will start with an example. Consider a puzzle where you have a lot of small fragments. There is only one solution and if you do it right you get a new object. In our case it is the final picture we were looking for.

So emergence describes the effect of new arising complex situations or complex systems through its simple components. It can be divided into weak emergence and strong emergence. Strong emergence means that a system can’t be explained by the help of its individual parts. This is a controversial assumption and for the sake of simplicity I won’t make a distinction between weak and strong emergence in this article.

Before going more into detail I have listed some examples for emergence below.

1. Our intelligence (human intelligence)

   

   (c) cc-by-sa | Fotis Bobolas

   Having billions of neurons that are interconnected and communicating with each other, our brain and especially the neural network in it is a very good example for emergence. Although there are a lot of attempts to rebuild this system, the phenomenon intelligence is unique so far (at least in this magnitude). It is a nice gift that everyone of us is carrying around.

2. An ant nest

   

   (c) cc-by-sa | Matt Reinbold

   While a single ant seems to be very weak and not intelligent, a whole ant colony can find the shortest path in complex areas. Did you know that there are Ant colony optimization algorithms? In addition there are ant colonies that can build nests with perfect thermal conditions (fresh air during the day and saved warmth for the night). The stunning thing is that these nests have applied knowledge of thermodynamics in it.

3. Giant’s Causeway

   

   (c) cc-by-sa | Gilles Lefeuvre

   Not only in living organisms but also in non-living things emergence can be found. One example for that is the Giant’s Causeway. A volcanic eruption has produced this extraordinary piece of nature. It is located in northern Ireland and it is declared World Heritage Site.

There are a lot of things that seem to be very unspectacular in our daily life. The point is that you often forget the importance of the corresponding details: the little components that are responsible for much mightier phenomena.

Very sensitive systems underlie emergent phenomena like the ones above. Changing initial conditions can cause the extinction of an emergent phenomenon. Although the starting conditions can be deterministic the interplay of its components and with it the outcome is very unpredictable. This is referred to as the Chaos theory. When it comes to emergence there is only one possibility to achieve a desired outcome. You could say we need to hit the jackpot here.

To be more precise every component of the entire system increases its complexity in an exponential manner. That is why we have no possibility to explain such effects with the help of maths or especially with the help of computers (super computers) today. They are just too complex for our technology.

Whereas a neural network looks nice and easy to understand on the first glance it is very complicated to understand its intended functionality inside our brain. As long we don’t know how things like consciousness come up there is no chance to simulate intelligent behaviour like ours. One possible approach is to obtain information and to build a precise computer model of our brain. By achieving this goal we will have considerably more reach of play to understand the emergence behind it.

In conclusion emergence means the creation of new things with the help of a hierarchical construction. It is responsible for things like organisms, swarm intelligence and intelligence to work in the way we know it. In my opinion it is not a taken-for-grantedness but rather a very fascinating phenomenon that exists in our life.