Emergence

I just got done reading the first chapter in Mayr's This Is Biology, which is about the questin "What is Life?"He discusses physicalists and vitalists, and comes to the conclusion that they were both right and both wrong. The physicalists were wrong in trying to describe all of life in terms of physico-chemical laws, and the vitalists were wrong in thinking there was a fundamental vital force in life. He concludes one of the key concepts they were missing was that of emergence."The whole is more than the sum of its part" comes up a lot in biology, and for some reason it always seemed like an unuseful way of describing biological organization. The point people seem to be making with this is that if you just took the components of life and threw them in a vat you will not get anything interesting happening. The key is not just what we are made of but how our constituents of organized.But, is "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" or "emergence" really a useful way to describe it. Why not just "Life must be understood in terms of its material make up and its organization", i.e., material cause and formal cause (as well as the final evolutionary cause).The claim of emergence is that you cannot predict the behavior of the whole from knowing about its parts. But is this really true? Is it a pragmatic difficulty or a fundamental reality? I was reading the Wikipedia site about "Emergence" and it said that an air molecule was a good example of emergence. You could not, the site claimed, predict the behavior of a bunch of air molecules from knowing the properties of one of them; you could not predict it would be good at transmitting sound. But why not? It seems you could if you understand how an air molecule would behave in a collision. Or isn't this considered a property? If that is the case then it seems like a shallow semantic argument.I understand this post is something of a ramble, but that merely reflects my confusion with regard to this subject. Edited by JustinC, : Spelling

I placed this in Is It Science?, because the OP is questioning the basis for the use of "emergence" in scientific explanations.Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.Edited by AdminNWR, : add comment

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Often, yes. The primary reason is that the interactions between parts are usually non-linear, and so you have a chaotic system as soon as you start considering more than one or two parts in isolation. The three-body problem of Newtonian gravity is one of the best examples of this.So we are forced to consider bulk properties of the parts, and this is where we see the emergent behaviour: dynamics that we simply cannot predict or access from a bottom-up approach.

I do not have problems with CaveDiver's reading of "emergence" physically. This however leaves a huge middle area untouched (between the modern notion of "chaos" and the well discussed "three - body problem" (I need only invoke the name of Bosocovich in that regard to get right to the after Bohr('s Uncle) physiological implications)). It is true that the Provines' and Goulds' of the world, "speak" TO terms of chaos etc. but the really readble difference of vitalists and physicalists (such as D'Arcy Thompson biologically) has to do with POTENTIALLY STATISTISCAL (not merely dynamically first and forewarding) claims at the notion of "emergent traits." This is a term Gould used.I am not as enamoured with the term. My first exposure to this concept was from Richard Boyd who was trying to explain to me how "downward causation" was recieved in the scientific and philosophical community. What seems to have happened for Mayr and other "organacist" biologists is that they relied on "emergence" to justify the independence of whole organism biology (and Darwin's use of organic individuality fudnamentally via natural selection) from any kind of reductionism of any stripe. Mayr and Gould for instance DO NOT follow Boscovich and still comprehend some notion of infinty. They do not. They relie on completely finite notions of a body (no matter the shape death restricts life to etc.)Regardless with infinity there is a cognizable notion of whole-part relations (Russell limits via the logic of contradiction to "classes" (but this need not be the BIOLOGICAL relation of perception and aspects of an objective horizon via sensical intutions etc.)) that have not been trait-wise applied in biology as far as I am aware. Instead "emergence" is used to justify levels of organization given a hierarcy of levels of selection. This is very curious elite-wise because the only reason to do so seems to me to jam Wesimannianism against French biology of any spot. Particularly one could site ideas contrary Wright but really if the "continuity 's of the germ plasm" was thought within Cantor's work it seems that "emergence" is not necessary but only "collectivities" that Lebesgue wrote about mathematically.I will explain this again later as I realize this is not as clear as I need to be here.If emergence was introduced to explain "downward causation" (I can show the source for this different idea of causation than reductionism from the the 70s I believe) then the idea of a Cell is one which is "more" than its parts in that way. The idea of the organization of an organism is another. Unless one insists that levels of selection trump levels of organization it does not seem to be much of an issue whether via chaos or simple description to admit the existence of "wholes" in biology that are 'more' than the sum of the parts. This comes from the reality of the statistical nature of evolutionary theory just as a social scientists would use stats to make generalizations while not on a lower level from appearences of "clumps" in morphosopace.If you want with Cavediver etc. to extend a purely physical relation( no matter what the discipline of "biology" signs in your mind) then it is very, very interesting to try to "read" the physicist's notion of "virial" of a gas, upward through EITHER levels of selection or levels of organization(using attractions and repulsions of atoms). In fact my very first internet post (on Taxacom, about 8 years ago) was about this. I do think that trying to explain effects biologicaly by ever smaller things ( I have made this conclusion by comparing hierarchical thermodynamics and macrothermodynamics temporally in biology) reductionistically is. I do not think it is able to relate what can and is being discussed.

To Brad and CavediverI guess I don't have as big as a problem with emergence as I thought. I knew about the three-body problem and other forms of "chaotic" emergence but always considered those types more fundamental than the kind used in biology.Jacob describes emergence as:

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At each level, units of relatively well-defined size and almost identical structure associate to form a unit of the level above. Each of these units formed by the intergration of sub-units may be given the general name 'integron'. An integron is formed by assembling integrons on the level below it; it takes part in the construction of the integron of the level above."

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Mayr then follows up with "Each integron has new characteristics and capacities not present at any lower level of integration; these can be said to have emerged."One of my main problems was with how to objectively define levels of the heirarchy. For instance, life is often described as a heirarchy from macromolecules to the ecosystem (biosphere). My question is at what level(s) do we see emergence and what are these emergent properties within the biological framework.I may be looking at this the wrong way. The reason emergence seems a little questionable within this framework is that the levels in heirarchy always seemed subjective to me, e.g., how can you systematically delineate different levels. But if emergence behavior can be shown at each level then I think you have a case for calling each an "objective" level in the heirarchy and not just a hueristic devise for viewing biological organization.And also with regard to the three-body problem. Is it possible to describe the three body problem at its system level in a predictable fashion (besides moving on body a little, the the other a little, etc. since this breaks down in the long run I hear).My thoughts aren't very clear here but if this level of description isn't possible, and we used these three body systems as "integrons" for a next level of organization, the emergence behavior that results would be the result of the non-linear interaction of the most basic components, and not the integrons, correct?

It is nice that you do not have a problem with "emergence." For me, I fear it more than Mick's spider video embedded on EVC.When Jacob said of the "integron" he wrote "at each level." It has been a while since I tried to get a noodle or two around what Jacob engineered but it seems that the "level" here refers to a level of organization but in the count on who is one uping whom (Dawkins or Gould for instance) it matters whether this "integron" is an "interactor" or if the "intergron" aside from a "replicator" is at this "level" OF SELECTION.It is extremely curious that Mayr only LATE in his writing speaks of "vital forces." Crossing the semicolon is a Harvardian view. I do not see it here at the edge of Cornell Figenbaum Chaos. I did not see it that way on 9/11 either. Mayr justifies ORGANACISM
not a idea with a long pedigree
and this REQURIED DEFENSE via 'emergence.' No defense of whole organism biology is needed if it expands say in the direction MartinV is suggesting on EVC.Yes, yes... how to DEFINE levels of a hierachy is a HUGE psychological conundrum but I do not feel it need be any harder than creatively writing a TV commerical. As for the smaller levels that are biologically active, Georgi Gladyshev's invocation of the "supramolecular" level (between the molecule and "super(macro)molecule" )seemed but a fudge of a different flavor to me at first but IF one is determined to decide what a "level" is IN EITHER THE SELECTIONIST or the ORGANIZABLE sense then *this* is a cut of reality that qualifies. So THEN yes, one does not have to have to have some issue or probelm with the idea, as I noted earlier about the notion of a "cell."The use of emergence as a category for doable biology requires the entire philosophical commentary that seperates teleology and teleomatics PURPOSIVELY so unless one is interested in dealing with apperceptions of biophilosophy explicitly in one's subjectivity or one simply accepts the IDEA based on authority this is really too hard concept for me, myself to buy, socially into.As to the three-body issue, while genearlization of Bosocovich's work from it, is less prone to baggage:

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Explanations for saturation of the strong nuclear force are sometimes based on quantum "exchange forces" and sometimes based on the notion of nucleons as possessing hard shells, which is equivalent to the positing of an even more strongly repulsive force between nucleons at even shorter distances than the characteristic distance of the so-called "strong nuclear force". (The latter idea is reminiscent of the undulating force field in the Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis of Ruggiero Boscovich, (1711-1787)). Regardless of the explanation, the fact that the strong nuclear force exhibits saturation is extremely important for the structure of material objects, and for certain kinds of nuclear reactions. The binding energy per nucleon increases roughly in proportion to the number of nucleons for small configurations, but as the number of nucleons increases, the binding energy per nucleon levels out, and actually decreases slightly, as shown in the plot below.

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Potential Energy, Inertia, and Quantum Coherence

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look also etc.-http://epublish.utdallas.edu/theses/13221/but when I for instance try to extend his writing from the physical to the biological I come up to all the problems I had, that had me deep sixed, in the eighties from Cornell.I think the word "behavior" is doing incorrect double duty here (in physics to DESCRIBE and in biology to semantize). In this sense electro-pollution into my tissue from my computer screen is "emergent." There can be a more intricate discussion.Edited by Brad McFall, : letter NEdited by Brad McFall, : "macro"Edited by Brad McFall, : use of connective "but"

This isn't just true with biology. This is essentially true in just about everything.For example, if you have a simple pendulum, its motion is very predictable and periodic. But as soon as you add another part to it to make it a double pendulum, you have a chaotic system.The double pendulum is a perfect example of what you said in the following...

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The claim of emergence is that you cannot predict the behavior of the whole from knowing about its parts.

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Yes, theoretically if you know ALL the properties and ALL the initial conditions of EVERY molecule in a particular sample then you can predict what happens next. The problem is it's inherently impossible for us to know all the properties and initial conditions accurately enough to make such a prediction. That's why they're called chaotic systems.Even something as simple as a double pendulum is called a chaotic system. How in the freakin' hell do you propose we find out the initial conditions of every molecule in a medium? You can't.

I can relate to the problem. It took me awhile to wrap my brain around the concept in biology. I blame my confusion on the fact that biologists stole the concept from phyicists - who make a living out of being obscure.In the first place, you need to drop, or at least fudge a bit, any concept of "hierarchies" in biology. Although that can be a useful visualization, the reality is more like a fuzzy set than an ordered hierarchy. Most biological processes are essentially feedback loops both within and between the "levels" under discussion. For practical uses, we refer to "organism level" or "molecular level" or "ecosystem level", but in reality we're only pretending that these have any real, distinct existence.To answer your question, emergent properties are the norm at all levels. The way I personally visualize the concept is that every biological process - whether we're talking cellular chemistry or community and ecosystem interactions - is a system. These systems are composed of different bits and parts and do different things, but each of the parts is necessary, and each system interacts with other systems giving you systems of systems ad infinitum ad nauseum. Because of feedback and interaction between these systems and systems of systems, all of them show emergent properties - reactions or whatever that can not simply be attributed to any one component system, but require the "whole" to manifest themselves. Basically, it's "turtles all the way down" - quite possibly until you exit the sidereal universe below the level of the Higgs boson.This is probably a bit different than the physics concept, and I may have some of it wrong - but that's the way I understand emergence in relation to biology.

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I can relate to the problem. It took me awhile to wrap my brain around the concept in biology. I blame my confusion on the fact that biologists stole the concept from phyicists - who make a living out of being obscure.

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I'm glad you can relate. The concept always comes at the beginning of biology text books and then the subject is never addressed again. Whereas in physics, it seems it is brought up and then examples are given. In biology, I see no such examples.

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In the first place, you need to drop, or at least fudge a bit, any concept of "hierarchies" in biology. Although that can be a useful visualization, the reality is more like a fuzzy set than an ordered hierarchy.

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Yes, I always took it as a useful visualization. But if the Jacob's concept of emergence is correct then they'd have to have an objective existence since emergence occurs between levels in the heirarchy. To reiterate Jacob's concept:

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Most biological processes are essentially feedback loops both within and between the "levels" under discussion. For practical uses, we refer to "organism level" or "molecular level" or "ecosystem level", but in reality we're only pretending that these have any real, distinct existence.

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Hmm..I'm not sure I understand this bit. If there is an actual feedback between these levels then it seems they'd have to have a real, distinct existence. I'm almost visualizing this in terms of Strange Loops, in which Hofstadter writes: This seems to be the kindof thing you are implying is happening between these "levels" but the "levels" would have to have some objective existence in this case.

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To answer your question, emergent properties are the norm at all levels. The way I personally visualize the concept is that every biological process - whether we're talking cellular chemistry or community and ecosystem interactions - is a system. These systems are composed of different bits and parts and do different things, but each of the parts is necessary, and each system interacts with other systems giving you systems of systems ad infinitum ad nauseum. Because of feedback and interaction between these systems and systems of systems, all of them show emergent properties - reactions or whatever that can not simply be attributed to any one component system, but require the "whole" to manifest themselves .

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This seems a little different than the emergence behavior Jacob's is discussing. The bolded part seems like it can just be attributed to organization of the systems. For instance, a car moving down the street cannot be attributed to any one part of the system but depends on the "whole" of it.Also, thanks for the reply Gasby. But i'd like to focus more of Jacob's idea of emergence as he states above.Let me try and articulate my questions a little better.1. Does Jacob's notion of emergence depend on there being an objective way to define heirarchies, or can heirarchies be defined by emergence?If you read Hofstadter's quote, it seems the latter cannot be the case since he thinks that emergence results from the interaction of top levels and bottom levels of the heirarchy (at least the emergent property of consciousness).2. Does emergence imply that there isn't a single level in which you can describe the universe, as an ultra-reductionist may contend? And does it makes sense for these different levels to interact with each other since the higher ones are built upon the lower ones? In other words, can higher levels have causal influence on the lower levels?Thanks for all the feedback. I find this subject of great interest but very confusing. Edited by JustinC, : No reason given.

In principle it is always possible to know the behaviour of a deterministic system from the properties of it's component parts. This is true of emergent systems as well (and emergence, BTW, does not need the system to be Chaotic!). The significant point about emergent systems is that in order to predict the properties of the whole system you actually have to model the whole system, or at least a large subset of it; in other words, significant portions of the behaviour of the whole lie in their interactions.In many biological cases it is simply not possible for us to model the whole with currently extant equipment.

This is one of the problems. If you'll allow me a slight digression, one of the key problems in relating physics concepts to biology is that we deal with very different entities. In physics, until they are in the realms of the very very big or the very very small, they are dealing normally with discrete, inviolable and unchanging fundamental entities. (Cavediver, for instance, dances unconcerned in the realm of the really weird.) However, for most practical purposes, an electron is an electron, as a carbon atom is a carbon atom whether it is part of a star, a wall, or you and me. Biologists, on the other hand, must make do with entities which are constantly changing and which grade into each other rather than being discrete.Here's a hpothetical conversation to illustrate the point: What is a species? Erm, well, it's a set of populations that grade into each other, but between which substantial gene flow occurs more than it occurs with other related species. Okay, so what is a population? Umm, it's a set of individual organisms from the same species that are in geographic proximity, are capable of relatively free gene flow, share similar if not identical niches, and aren't isolated from each other (which definition itself falls apart outside of sexually reproducing organisms). Okay again, so what is an individual organism? Errr, its a discrete member of a population that may or may not be genetically distinct from other members but certainly varies from other members (nicely vague definition, that). An organism is a collection of cells that work together to form it. Umm, okay, so what is a cell? Uhh, a cell is the collective term for the component chemical "factories"...etc.As you can see, no matter what "level" we are talking about, you can't find a discrete entity that you can describe without reference to either itself or to another level - a big indicator in my book at least that any kind of hierarchy is merely a convenience that allows us to try and understand or manipulate concepts but that has no separate reality. Physicists have it easy... Although it may be hard to see, this formulation is very similar to mine. What he's done is to more or less arbitrarily create a term that permits him (and us) to conceptualize what occurs at different levels of system integration. In reality, an "integron" is a descriptive term for a particular system sub-component or combination of systems. In actual fact, it is no more "real" than the term "species", which all of us bandy about as though we knew what it meant. Yes, this is pretty much what I'm talking about - or at least an extension of it to describe a particular case. What is interesting, and not immediately obvious perhaps, is that Jacob and Hofstadter are doing the same thing - trying in words to conceptualize a phenomonon that in reality defies conceptualization. They have both, in various ways, arbitrarily assigned a hierarchy to something that in fact has no hierarchy in order to try and explain the phenomenon. Although using different terms, and approaching the question from a slightly different direction, they are actually saying much the same thing. Whether each individually and severally think the "levels" or "systems" they're talking about are actually definably separate and discrete I don't know - but I doubt it.Let me try what is possibly a very weak analogy to see if I can make what I'm trying to portray a bit more understandable. Take a pot of cold water, place it on a stove, and turn on the burner. At what point is the water hot? Where is the intrinsic line between hot and cold that has some objective reality? What about the point where the water is cool, lukewarm, tepid, warm, etc? Don't these terms refer to rather arbitrary distinctions that we use for convenience? It is the same problem when you are dealing with the systems of systems that represent biological entities. Emergent properties, as both Jacob and Hofstadter have stated in different ways, are dependent on the interactions between the various components - "up" and "down" - of the systems. Doesn't mean that a hierarchical structure isn't extremely useful, but the idea is that we need to remember at least in the back of our minds that these are conceptualizations, not reality per se. You've almost got it. The main problem here is a car isn't really part of a system as we're talking about it in biology. Biological systems are bimodal (or even multimodal) feedback loops. Whereas the operation of a car may be affected by the environment in which it is passing (wet road, traffic lights, etc), the car itself has limited or no effect on the environment - at least no immediate feedback to modify or change the environment (damn, this analogy is stretched). Anyway, that's the intrinsic difference that I see. Hopefully, I gave you my take on question one already. So on to this one...Well, I'd say - at least for biology - that reductionism serves a very noble purpose: it allows us to approach an understanding and description of phenomena by isolating those phenomena from other phenomena. However, as jar is fond of saying, "the map is not the territory". Our minds (or at least, mine ), may not be able to encompass the entirety of reality at one go. Breaking things down into discrete, albeit often arbitrary, chunks seems to be an excellent way of trying to figure out what's going on. The universe, on the other hand, isn't constrained by our (my) limited imaginations.

Sorry for the late reply, stupid life gets in the way of these truly important issues.

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This is one of the problems. If you'll allow me a slight digression, one of the key problems in relating physics concepts to biology is that we deal with very different entities. In physics, until they are in the realms of the very very big or the very very small, they are dealing normally with discrete, inviolable and unchanging fundamental entities. (Cavediver, for instance, dances unconcerned in the realm of the really weird.) However, for most practical purposes, an electron is an electron, as a carbon atom is a carbon atom whether it is part of a star, a wall, or you and me. Biologists, on the other hand, must make do with entities which are constantly changing and which grade into each other rather than being discrete.

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I mean, in terms of classical physics particles are discrete. But when you enter the realm of renormalized particles, there is no such thing as a discrete particle; you can only describe them in terms of a infintite number of virtual particles. "An electron is an electron" should be "An electron is the sum of an infintely many Feynman diagrams, some of which describe the electron as an electron, some in which it gives off a photon which gives off two antiparticles, etc."Now biologists may look at this situation and scoff, "Ok, but for most practical circumstances we can assume an electron is a discrete inviolable particle. Keep that complicated mumbo jumbo to yourselves."Now I can't help but feel a physicist would say the same thing to a biologist, "Yes, yes, an organism can't be precisely defined, blah blah blah, but for most practical circumstances I know what an organism is. I know you're boundaries are not those of the house, but those of your body"

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Here's a hpothetical conversation to illustrate the point: What is a species? Erm, well, it's a set of populations that grade into each other, but between which substantial gene flow occurs more than it occurs with other related species. Okay, so what is a population? Umm, it's a set of individual organisms from the same species that are in geographic proximity, are capable of relatively free gene flow, share similar if not identical niches, and aren't isolated from each other (which definition itself falls apart outside of sexually reproducing organisms). Okay again, so what is an individual organism? Errr, its a discrete member of a population that may or may not be genetically distinct from other members but certainly varies from other members (nicely vague definition, that). An organism is a collection of cells that work together to form it. Umm, okay, so what is a cell? Uhh, a cell is the collective term for the component chemical "factories"...etc.

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I believe physics has similar problems as well, but the vagueness may not come about due to the same sort of hierarchy you describe above. (Anyway, I'm not trying to drag this debate off topic so if you feel the physics comment is not fundamentally important feel no need to respond. I'm not trying to be overly pedantic).

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As you can see, no matter what "level" we are talking about, you can't find a discrete entity that you can describe without reference to either itself or to another level - a big indicator in my book at least that any kind of hierarchy is merely a convenience that allows us to try and understand or manipulate concepts but that has no separate reality. Physicists have it easy...

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The bolded part I don't quite understand. The kind of vagueness you describe in your hypothetical conversation above seems to make perfect sense if the hierarchy was real. More specifically, you'll run into the kind of fuzziness in any inclusive hierarchy. Levels above are defined by levels below, which are defined by levels below, ad infinitum until you reach the ground bottom description (if there is one).I don't think that fuzziness counts against the idea of an objective hierarchy, I think it actually supports it.

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Although it may be hard to see, this formulation is very similar to mine. What he's done is to more or less arbitrarily create a term that permits him (and us) to conceptualize what occurs at different levels of system integration. In reality, an "integron" is a descriptive term for a particular system sub-component or combination of systems. In actual fact, it is no more "real" than the term "species", which all of us bandy about as though we knew what it meant.

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This is one of the key problems. You seem to imply it is just a conceptualization that helps of describe what occurs, but it has no analog in reality. The impression I get from the readings about the subject is that its proponents do believe these levels exist, and are not just learning tools.We're are told "the whole is more than the sum of its parts," not "a good way to think about this is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, though it's just a mental tool"

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Yes, this is pretty much what I'm talking about - or at least an extension of it to describe a particular case. What is interesting, and not immediately obvious perhaps, is that Jacob and Hofstadter are doing the same thing - trying in words to conceptualize a phenomonon that in reality defies conceptualization.

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I do like this way of putting it, i.e, "trying in words to conceptualize a phenomenon that in reality defies conceptualization." I'm almost inclined to agree with you after reading Hofstadter's view of emergence. Thinking that a top level in a hierarchy can have causal powers on the bottom levels may be a helpful way to think about the phenomenon, but in reality it seems these are just different descriptions (high levels to lower levels) of the same phenomenon, and it seems kind of absurd to think that "descriptions can have causual powers" is anything but a metaphor for the actual situation which we cannot satisfactorally conceptualize.

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They have both, in various ways, arbitrarily assigned a hierarchy to something that in fact has no hierarchy in order to try and explain the phenomenon. Although using different terms, and approaching the question from a slightly different direction, they are actually saying much the same thing. Whether each individually and severally think the "levels" or "systems" they're talking about are actually definably separate and discrete I don't know - but I doubt it.

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I'm inclined to believe that most do think these levels are discrte and definable simply because they don't come out an explicitly say otherwise. Maybe they just expect one to to read between the lines a little more than I've been doing, but I doubt it.

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Let me try what is possibly a very weak analogy to see if I can make what I'm trying to portray a bit more understandable. Take a pot of cold water, place it on a stove, and turn on the burner. At what point is the water hot? Where is the intrinsic line between hot and cold that has some objective reality? What about the point where the water is cool, lukewarm, tepid, warm, etc? Don't these terms refer to rather arbitrary distinctions that we use for convenience?

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I think this situation is a little too far off the mark because it's not based on a hierarchy. But yes, I do believe they are arbitrary distinctions used for convenience.

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It is the same problem when you are dealing with the systems of systems that represent biological entities. Emergent properties, as both Jacob and Hofstadter have stated in different ways, are dependent on the interactions between the various components - "up" and "down" - of the systems. Doesn't mean that a hierarchical structure isn't extremely useful, but the idea is that we need to remember at least in the back of our minds that these are conceptualizations, not reality per se.

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Again, I'm inclined to agree with you. I just wish I could see the author's such as Jacobs, Hofstadter, and Mayr explicitly saying what you are. Instead, they seem to think these have fundamental reality.For instance, Mayr thinks that the main concepts old biologists were missing when trying to describe living systems were "emergence" and the "genetic program." He doesn't mention the former is a heuristic guide to the actual phenomenon and the latter has an actual reality.And, yeah, the car analogy is getting a bit stretched. I was going to talk about how CO2 emmision may one day effect the environment which will cause humans to not drive the car so much, but yeah...that's not helpful.

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Well, I'd say - at least for biology - that reductionism serves a very noble purpose: it allows us to approach an understanding and description of phenomena by isolating those phenomena from other phenomena. However, as jar is fond of saying, "the map is not the territory". Our minds (or at least, mine ), may not be able to encompass the entirety of reality at one go. Breaking things down into discrete, albeit often arbitrary, chunks seems to be an excellent way of trying to figure out what's going on. The universe, on the other hand, isn't constrained by our (my) limited imaginations.

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So here are my conclusions so far.It seems that emergence is a sound concept in biology, despite the fact that individual examples cannot be rigorously shown. By emergence, I mean that the action of the system cannot be predicted from the knowledge of the parts due to the complex interactions between them (and this isn't a practical difficulty but a fundamental one).As for how to think of a hierarchy, I'm still uncertain. I wanna lean towards you're view, but it does seem to have a fundamental reality.In either case, the idea of a higher level in a description having causual influence on lower levels seems absurd to me except if it is to be taken simply as heuristic guide to true understanding of the phenomena.

At what point does it begin to boil? Evaporation occurs regardless of water temperature, so that is not indicative.One of the contrasts I like between western and eastern thought is (W) a watched pot never boils and (E) you can meditate on the 10 stages of boiling water.And of course pressure has something to do with it (as Tibetan monks found when forced out of their mountains by the chinese, and burning their mouths when drinking freshly boiled tea).To me the biggest issue of emergence is not of systems within biology but of biological systems -- life. From chemicals. Who'd a thunk eh?

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Just taking a few pieces of this response. If I miss something you consider significant, let me know. As I mentioned, it's entirely possibly they do. I have no way of knowing. On the other hand, we tend to use terms that allow us to manipulate and discuss things that aren't necessarily concrete. For instance, we often use analogies (such as DNA being or containing a "code") or "terms of convenience" (such as "species") which really have no intrinsic reality. These are phenomenally useful conceits, which is why we use them. You couldn't "do science" without them. Doesn't mean they accurately describe the thing they are used on. I feel the same way about the supposed hierarchies we use when talking about emergent behavior in systems. This may in some ways be solely my personal, idiosyncratic way of looking at the issue. I think it's sound, but I freely admit others may disagree. You definitely got what I and the authors you cited were trying to say. The only thing I would add is that it's not only the interactions of the components of the particular system internally, but also the interactions of the system as a whole with other systems - "up", "down" and "laterally" that create the conditions we term emergent behavior or emergence. I'm not saying that it isn't possible this is the case. However, I have never seen such a thing demonstrated "in the wild". And, given the very fuzzy and possibly non-existent "borders" between what we term "levels in the hierarchy", I have come down on the side of this being another "term of convenience". Don't abandon the concept - it is another one of those very useful conceits. But, on the other hand, if I'm right, don't expect to be able to demonstrate it has a concrete, objective reality. In a nutshell, that's my take on it. It's a heuristic - and a damn useful one.

That's a very good question. Without knowing the other parameters of the question (e.g., pressure among other possibilities), how can you answer it? Now THERE's emergent behavior. Who'd a thunk it, indeed? Of course, we still have that pesky little problem of defining "life" in the first place.