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To that short list I would add some purely mathematical topics such as cellular automata (which show great promise towards helping formalize the concept of emer

by epgui 4y ago

To that short list I would add some purely mathematical topics such as cellular automata (which show great promise towards helping formalize the concept of emergence IMO), but also biology, ecology, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, economics... There's layers upon layers of emergence all around us. Even just within "physics" there are probably multiple layers of emergence (a striking and popular example is particle-like behaviour arising from wave-like fields). There is "reasonable speculation" as to whether space, time, gravity might all be emergent rather than fundamental...

analog31 4y ago
Indeed, that's fairly widely accepted. What I'm not sure about is whether the study of emergence has yielded new scientific insights yet. The author mentions Wolfram, but I think fumbles around for a reason why scientists were ambivalent about Wolfram's work. The reason is that clever and even surprising demonstrations of cellular automata have not yet yielded any connection to empirical science, thus it's premature to call it a "new kind of science." Not because scientists are opposed to computational models. Physics used up its supply of "closed form equation" models roughly a century ago, and has fully embraced computation. We even suffered through a few decades of grinding through computations by hand, waiting for computers to be invented. If you stretch the definition of cellular automata a bit, you end up with models that divide regions into a grid of cells, with evolution rules that lend themselves to iterative computation. Examples include finite element analysis and climate modeling.
- epgui 4y ago
  Personally, I think it's sufficiently interesting that "emergence" happens and that we have multiple examples of it. I'm not hung up on whether the study of it will lead to new testable predictions (though that would be wonderful). I think in the worst case, it already gives us a vocabulary to explain that some unintuitive or surprising phenomena of a certain category are normal, and that higher-order patterns will occur naturally even from very simple systems. In the worst case, it's merely a word for an abstract pattern we observe all around us. I'd wager the vast majority of laypeople cannot conceive how humans (or life) came to be without some sort of divine intervention. I certainly don't think anyone has the answer to that haha... But having this vocabulary, and "mere knowledge" of the existence of various examples of emergence can replace this incredulity with a more grounded appreciation of the inherent beauty and wonder of nature. I think the concept of emergence is profound in itself, because of how it can shift our perception of our own place in the world.

by epgui 4y ago

analog31 4y ago

Indeed, that's fairly widely accepted. What I'm not sure about is whether the study of emergence has yielded new scientific insights yet. The author mentions Wolfram, but I think fumbles around for a reason why scientists were ambivalent about Wolfram's work. The reason is that clever and even surprising demonstrations of cellular automata have not yet yielded any connection to empirical science, thus it's premature to call it a "new kind of science." Not because scientists are opposed to computational models. Physics used up its supply of "closed form equation" models roughly a century ago, and has fully embraced computation. We even suffered through a few decades of grinding through computations by hand, waiting for computers to be invented. If you stretch the definition of cellular automata a bit, you end up with models that divide regions into a grid of cells, with evolution rules that lend themselves to iterative computation. Examples include finite element analysis and climate modeling.

epgui 4y ago
Personally, I think it's sufficiently interesting that "emergence" happens and that we have multiple examples of it. I'm not hung up on whether the study of it will lead to new testable predictions (though that would be wonderful). I think in the worst case, it already gives us a vocabulary to explain that some unintuitive or surprising phenomena of a certain category are normal, and that higher-order patterns will occur naturally even from very simple systems. In the worst case, it's merely a word for an abstract pattern we observe all around us. I'd wager the vast majority of laypeople cannot conceive how humans (or life) came to be without some sort of divine intervention. I certainly don't think anyone has the answer to that haha... But having this vocabulary, and "mere knowledge" of the existence of various examples of emergence can replace this incredulity with a more grounded appreciation of the inherent beauty and wonder of nature. I think the concept of emergence is profound in itself, because of how it can shift our perception of our own place in the world.