The re‐emergence of “emergence”: A venerable concept in search of a theory

Abstract

If "complexity" is currently the buzzword of choice for our newly minted millennium, as many theorists proclaim, "emergence" seems to be the explication of the hour for how complexity has evolved.Complexity, it is said, is an emergent phenomenon.Emergence is what "self-organizing" processes produce.Emergence is the reason why there are hurricanes, and ecosystems, and complex organisms like humankind, not to mention traffic congestion and rock concerts.Indeed, the term is positively awe-inspiring.As physicist Doyne Farmer observed, "It's not magic…but it feels like magic" [1].Among other things, emergence has been used by physicists to explain Be ´nard (convection) cells, by psychologists to explain consciousness, by economists and investment advisors to explain stock market behavior, and by organization theorists to explain informal "networks" in large companies.Indeed, a number of recent books view the evolutionary process itself as a self-organizing, emergent phenomenon (see below).But what is emergence?What does it explain, really?And why is it so readily embraced, in spite of its opacity, by reductionists and holists alike?There are very few terms in evolutionary theory these days-not even "natural selection"that can command such an ecumenical following.Though emergence may seem to be the "new, new thing," from the title of the recent bestseller by Michael Lewis about high technology in Silicon Valley, in fact it is a venerable term in evolutionary theory that traces back to the latter 19th and early 20th centuries.It was originally coined during an earlier upsurge of interest in the evolution of wholes, or, more precisely, what was viewed unabashedly in those days as a "progressive" trend in evolution toward new levels of organization culminating in mental phenomena and the human mind.This long-ago episode, part of the early history of evolutionary theory, is not well known today, or at least not fully appreciated.Nonetheless, it provides a theoretical context and offers some important insights into what can legitimately be called the re-emergence of emergence.