Emergence and Self-organisation

Emergence is the process of deriving some new and coherent structures, patterns and properties in a complex system.

Emergent phenomena occur due to the pattern of interactions between the elements of the system over time.

Emergent phenomena are observable at a macro-level, even though they are generated by micro-level elements.

First and second order emergence.

Explore emergence with this interactive essay from MIT
http://el.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/emergence/

Notes

Emergence is one of the characteristics of a complex system and has become such a important idea in complex systems that perhaps it deserves a special mention.

Emergence is the process of deriving some new and coherent structures, patterns and properties in a complex system. Emergent phenomena occur due to the pattern of interactions (non-linear and distributed) between the elements of the system over time. One of the main points about emergent phenomena is that they are observable at a macro-level, even though they are generated by micro-level elements.

In terms of social organisations, emergent behaviour is an important concept. For example, we could consider the occurrence or social norms within a group an emergent phenomena. Note that from a modelling point of view the identification of some behaviour as being emergent depends of what has been modelled. To continue the example of social norms above, social norms *could* have been one of the elements modelled in a system. Only in the case where they were not modelled explicitly, could they be considered an emergent phenomena.

Nigel Gilbert (editor of JASSS) makes an interesting comment about emergent behaviour in human social organisations compared to non-human social organisations (such as a collection of ants). The differentiation between the two organisations lies in the ability to reason. Specifically, ‘people have the ability to recognise, reason about and react to human institutions, that is, to emergent features. Behaviour which takes into account such emergent features might be called second-order emergence’ (as opposed to first-order emergent behaviour). This has implications for modelling human social situations since we might need to model what *effect* the macro-level properties have on agents actions.

Game of Life: Shows how organised forms can arise from the interaction of the parts, needing no central control and using only simple local rules.