What isn’t emergence? Well, on a trivial level, everything observable is a consequence of physics. So, is there anything observable that does not fall into the category of “physics”, and does that make the category meaningless?
I think I can come up with some things that “emergence” is not.
If X is not “emergent”, then:
a) X does not have a cellular automata-like model; there are no readily identifiable components of X that follow relatively simple, computable rules which generate the observed behavior of the system. (The game of tennis doesn’t look like an emergent property of any of its obvious components, unless you decide that tennis emerges from human brains.)
OR
b) X does not have a high-level model that describes the overall behavior of X without modeling the behavior of each individual component of X separately. (A list of telephone numbers is not emergent.)
People probably do use “emergent property” as a placeholder for “something caused by something else, but I don’t understand how” far too often, though.
Hmmm...
What isn’t emergence? Well, on a trivial level, everything observable is a consequence of physics. So, is there anything observable that does not fall into the category of “physics”, and does that make the category meaningless?
I think I can come up with some things that “emergence” is not.
If X is not “emergent”, then: a) X does not have a cellular automata-like model; there are no readily identifiable components of X that follow relatively simple, computable rules which generate the observed behavior of the system. (The game of tennis doesn’t look like an emergent property of any of its obvious components, unless you decide that tennis emerges from human brains.) OR b) X does not have a high-level model that describes the overall behavior of X without modeling the behavior of each individual component of X separately. (A list of telephone numbers is not emergent.)
People probably do use “emergent property” as a placeholder for “something caused by something else, but I don’t understand how” far too often, though.