For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about the intriguing world of emergent phenomena, where simplicity and complexity intertwine in unexpected ways.
Some emergent phenomena take the form of simplicity emerging from complexity: temperature and density are properties relating to the motion and arrangement of large groups of atoms or molecules. Spinning galaxies, biological organisms, and human societies behave in ways that can be elegantly described and predicted. Other types of emergence involve incredible complexity emerging and propagating from simple elements, as with the emergence of life from simpler pre-biotic chemistries on early Earth, or the emergence of the Universe’s structure in the first microseconds after the Big Bang.
“Emergence” takes on different meanings depending on what it’s being used to describe. Sometimes “emergent” is simply used to mean “coming into being.” When used in a more technical sense, though, conceptions of emergent phenomena are often divided between “weak” and “strong.” Cases of weak emergence would imply that the whole only appears to exceed the sum of its parts, but with enough knowledge the equation would even out. Weakly emergent systems are difficult to track and predict due to their complexity, but not because their nature is fundamentally new. Some philosophers even contend that all apparent emergence is weak — that it is largely an illusion brought about by the limitations of human perspective and knowledge.