Already Aristotle knew emergence:
he said the whole is sometimes more
than the sum of its parts (*). Do we
get the essence of "emergence" if we
take the whole minus the parts?
(*) He considered the question of unity
for aggregated things "which have
several parts and in which the
totality is not, as it were, a mere
heap, but the whole is something
besides the parts" (Aristotle
Metaphysics Book VIII, Chapter 6)
-J.
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