How does an ant always know what to do? How does a worker ant know that it's a worker ant, or a school of fish stay together? This is a function called emergence. Emergence is defined as a larger entity formed through smaller and simpler entities, with properties that the sum of their parts did not have. Most of the time, the knowledge and existence of the emergent being is irreducible to its original parts, meaning that the smaller beings usually cannot do the things the emergent being does. For example, with humanity, a single human cannot colonize an entire country, build cities, and grow crops in their lifetime, but with millions of humans, we can do such things.
Philosophy The concept of emergence has been around since the times of Aristotle, and since then many scientists and philosophers have researched it. Philosopher G.H. Lewes said: "Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same – their difference, when their directions are contrary." (Lewes 1875) There are two types of emergence; strong and weak. Weak emergence is simple enough that a computer can simulate the task, while strong emergence cannot be computer simulated. |