A decent thought-proxy for this : powered flight. An aircraft can approach powered flight without achieving it. With a given amount of thrust or aerodynamic ch

A decent thought-proxy for this : powered flight. An aircraft can approach powered flight without achieving it. With a given amount of thrust or aerodynamic characteristics, the aircraft will weigh dynamic_weight=(static_weight - x) where x is a combination of the aerodynamic characteristics and the amount of thrust applied. In no case where dynamic_weight>0 will the aircraft fly, even though it exhibits characteristics of flight, I.e the transfer of aerodynamic forces to counteract gravity. So while it progressively exhibits characteristics of flight, it is not capable of any kind of flight at all until the critical point of dynamic_weight<0. So the enabling characteristics are not “emergent”, but the behavior is. I think this boils down to a matter of semantics.