Emergent Entity
From CasGroup
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By this criterion alone, [http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2012/01/emergence.html most properties are emergent], as Daniel Little argues: "the sweetness of sugar, the flammability of woven cotton, the hardness of bronze". One could add the liquidity of water, the elasticity of rubber, or the rigidity of iron. Daniel Little argues that emergent properties exist in various degrees: the weakest form is mentioned above, if an emergent property of a system is just a property or capability that is not possessed by its parts. A form of [[emergence|weak emergence]]. | By this criterion alone, [http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2012/01/emergence.html most properties are emergent], as Daniel Little argues: "the sweetness of sugar, the flammability of woven cotton, the hardness of bronze". One could add the liquidity of water, the elasticity of rubber, or the rigidity of iron. Daniel Little argues that emergent properties exist in various degrees: the weakest form is mentioned above, if an emergent property of a system is just a property or capability that is not possessed by its parts. A form of [[emergence|weak emergence]]. | ||
| - | If one adds the constraint that the property cannot be derived, even in principle, from facts about the components and their arrangements within the structure in question, then only a few properties exist. This is a form of [[emergence|strong emergence]]. Somewhere in between are emergent properties where it is possible to infer the properties of the whole, but not a trivial matter to do so. [http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2012/01/emergence.html Daniel Little says] they are typical for [[Complex | + | If one adds the constraint that the property cannot be derived, even in principle, from facts about the components and their arrangements within the structure in question, then only a few properties exist. This is a form of [[emergence|strong emergence]]. Somewhere in between are emergent properties where it is possible to infer the properties of the whole, but not a trivial matter to do so. [http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2012/01/emergence.html Daniel Little says] they are typical for [[Complex System|complex systems]], and gives the following quote from Herbert Simon from his article "The Architecture of Complexity" |
: "Roughly, by a complex system I mean one made up of a large number of parts that interact in a nonsimple way. In such systems, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, not in an ultimate, metaphysical sense, but in the important pragmatic sense that, given the properties of the parts and the laws of their interaction, it is not a trivial matter to infer the properties of the whole. In the face of complexity, an in-principle reductionist may be at the same time a pragmatic holist." ~ Herbert Simon | : "Roughly, by a complex system I mean one made up of a large number of parts that interact in a nonsimple way. In such systems, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, not in an ultimate, metaphysical sense, but in the important pragmatic sense that, given the properties of the parts and the laws of their interaction, it is not a trivial matter to infer the properties of the whole. In the face of complexity, an in-principle reductionist may be at the same time a pragmatic holist." ~ Herbert Simon | ||
