Thus spake ERIC P. CHARLES circa 10/11/2009 09:13 PM: > "Once I've > attached the 'emergent' label to a phenomenon, I now know that I CANNOT apply > scientific methodologies to the problem that treat the phenomenon as > if:
Excellent modification. I do have a (speculative) positive answer, though. I've just been waiting to see if anyone else put it forward. My answer to Robert's question is: Once I trust that a phenomenon is emergent, I can be more confident in the assumption that the phenomenon can be used as a mechanism in a layer of abstraction that generates coarser phenomena. If a phenomenon is NOT emergent, then, in order to build an adequate description of the whole system, I must include the details of the mechanism that generated the phenomenon. I.e. any abstraction of those details will be inadequate or impoverished... the abstraction will be too easily punctured. If, however, a phenomenon is emergent, then I'm under less pressure to delineate each detail of its mechanism and can get away with encapsulating the phenomenon in a coarser abstraction. The _use_ to which such a categorization would be put is the method of replacement in, for example, modeling and simulation. If we need a more "sciency" method, then we can talk about compressibility. I might be able to claim that systems exhibiting emergent phenomena are _more_ compressible than those without them. Note that the above is about emergent phenomena, not emergent properties. I still think the concept of an emergent property is either useless, self-contradictory, or just confused. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
