The term “emergence” doesn’t mean anything in and of itself, but it does mean something very particular when applied to specific systems. For example, one could say that oscillating patterns with a period of four generations and lateral motion of 1⁄2 cell per generation are an emergent phenomenon of cellular automata on a randomly filled square grid with 3⁄23 rules (gliders in Conway’s game of life). You don’t know whether any given cell is alive or dead, but it’s a very good guess that given a modestly large board, there is a glider somewhere on that board. That’s what I take “emergent phenomenon” to mean.
The term “emergence” doesn’t mean anything in and of itself, but it does mean something very particular when applied to specific systems. For example, one could say that oscillating patterns with a period of four generations and lateral motion of 1⁄2 cell per generation are an emergent phenomenon of cellular automata on a randomly filled square grid with 3⁄23 rules (gliders in Conway’s game of life). You don’t know whether any given cell is alive or dead, but it’s a very good guess that given a modestly large board, there is a glider somewhere on that board. That’s what I take “emergent phenomenon” to mean.