Almost 25 years ago, I became intrigued by developments in science and math that have come to be known various labels, including "complex adaptive systems", "the mathematics of chaos", and "emergence." Through the 1990's I read a variety of books (popular & technical) and journal articles in these areas trying to better understand both the promise and the limitations of what was a radical shift in perspective (from top-down and reductionist to bottom-up and emergent).
While some of the work in these areas has been helpful in solving difficult problems (e.g, via agent-based systems), and I think that a grasp of the basic concepts is essential to anyone working with large complex systems, most of the initial hype has faded.
So, what was all the fuss about? It was, at a fundamental level I think, about whether information-intensive objects, structures and processes could spontaneously emerge under the right conditions (e.g., information networks with connections that are neither too numerous or too few ... the "edge of chaos") ... what I've come to think of as "emergence magic."
If such a thing could be achieved, then we would have the first demonstrable naturalistic explanation of where life came from and how its pervasive information-intensive objects, structures and processes came into being. And, we would have the promise of a powerful new tool for creating information-intensive capabilities that might very well increase computer hardware and software productivity by many orders of magnitude.
This article by Douglas Axe summarizes the latest of a long string of research that indicates that "emergence magic" is probably exactly that .... "magic." Although the emergence of higher levels of order is a pervasive feature of the universe (e.g., relatively simple individual behaviors in an ant colony results in much more complex behaviors at the colony level), it appears increasingly clear that emergence must be designed in. And, we have almost no understanding of how to design emergence.
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