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From: fostel@eos.ncsu.edu (Gary Fostel)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: emergent properties
Message-ID: <1990Oct26.220658.11281@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Date: 26 Oct 90 22:06:58 GMT
References: <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Sender: news@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu (USENET News System)
Reply-To: fostel@eos.ncsu.edu (Gary Fostel)
Organization: North Carolina State University
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A nice capsule statement about the "value" of emergents was recently
posted by Minsky, at MIT:
   
   The amazing thing is how rarely anything resembling an "inexplicable
   emergent" has ever reigned for very long in the history of Science --
   except for transient periods before better theories remove the need
   for the assumption of extra, special laws.  The moral is that,
   whenever you're pretty sure you are dealing with a "genuine emergent",
   you're proably making a mistake

I was discussing the idea of emergence with a physicist recently and 
something he said rings very true with this view of emergence.  He suggested
that gravity might be considered an emergent property of collections of
elementary particles.  In fact the "inexplicable emergent" property
of gravity and the effort to make it more explicable has been a dominant
influence on the direction of 20th century physics. 

"Scientists" generally do not like emergent properties and tend to devote 
their lives to eliminating them. 

----GaryFostel----                       Deptartment of Computer Science (?)
                                         North Carolina State University