Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 09-07-09 06:52 AM: > Also, it depends on a clear understanding of what it is to be a > "property of a part". I think to be a property of a part means that > you cannot mention any other part in the description of that part.
Excellent! This demonstrates quite well why it is incoherent to say that a systemic property is non-emergent. It is logically impossible to describe a _part_ of a system without describing the context or environment into which that part fits, namely the other parts of the system. Further, to describe any _unit_... any object with a boundary around it, you must distinguish that unit from the ambience around it. I.e. you can't describe the object without at least partially describing the NOT-object. So, the root of the incoherence of "emergent" lies in an inability to define a closure. (Unleash the Rosenites! ;-) > So, "being on the left" or "being added to the pile first" are not > properly properties of parts. And neither is position or momentum because they both have to be defined _relative_ to something, trivially to an arbitrary vector space origin, non-trivially to other particles. Unless you're treating the particle as a system, itself. And then position and momentum are emergent properties of the sub-particle components. So, either way, they are a result of the systems organization and the interaction of their components. Emergence is a trivial (but not entirely useless) word except in the sense of emergency: "A serious situation or occurrence that happens unexpectedly and demands immediate action", which boils down to "poorly understood" or, at least, unpredictable. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
