the.com/emergence
the moment a crowd of dumb parts conspires into something that suddenly, infuriatingly, knows things.
means the process by which complex patterns, properties, or behaviors arise from the interactions of simpler parts that don't individually possess them.
from From Latin 'emergere,' to rise up or come forth — built from 'e-' (out of) plus 'mergere' (to dip, plunge, submerge). So the same root that drowns things in 'submerge' also lets them surface: 'emergence' is the picture of something breaking up out of the water into view. The noun 'emergency' shares this lineage — both capture the sense of something suddenly rising into the light. The specialized scientific and philosophical sense (wholes that are more than the sum of their parts) is a much later borrowing of the older word.
- no single ant
- Colonies solve mazes no individual ant comprehends
- wet water
- Two H2O molecules aren't wet; trillions are
- brain trick
- No neuron is conscious, yet you are
- coined late
- Philosopher G.H. Lewes named it in 1875
- more is different
- Physicist Anderson's 1972 manifesto against reductionism
ant colony superorganism — leafcutter ants coordinate 5 million+ individuals without central command to farm fungi underground
murmuration starling flocks — hundreds of thousands of starlings in coordinated flight patterns over uk and europe each evening, no leader
consciousness from neurons — 86 billion neurons in human brain produce subjective experience and self-awareness through local interactions