Emergence: Its characteristics and limits [George Farre, ISSS 1998 Paper Session, July 21/98]

These notes are a rough transcription, prepared as each individual presenter and/or commentator spoke at the ISSS 1998 conference. Gaps and errors have likely occurred. For more accurate citations, please consult the original presenters. These notes have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute (sabi@systemicbusiness.org).

George Farre

• Training in particle physics, works in philosophy of physics.

Assumption that all material (observable) systems are evolutionary.

• Big bang, etc.

• Symmetry of explosive.
• Expansion under conservative constraints, highly localized event: as it expands, the energy density falls sharply.

• Start with radiant energy, then get spontaneous generation of materials (which we don't understand)
• Energy density decreases asymptotically with time.
• Can view as eras.
• Some things not stable at high energy become stable, e.g. quarks and elementary particles.
• Eventually, the environment is not hostile to their existence.

• Emergence: properties which are not of the parts.
• Hierarchies become stable.
• Atoms appear, when protons combine with electrons (i.e. hydrogen).

Then inorganic molecules, organic molecules, etc.

Always with decreasing energy.

Evolution is then a sign of complexification

• Hierarchy is a sign of discontinuous energy gradients.
• Hierarchy as strata: levels as energy gaps.
• Start from elementary particles: where structure is not observable (i.e. it exists, but we can't observe it).
• All interactions take place within strata.
• If you want to see inside the atom, need to look with hard radiation, high energy to break up the shell: not light, x-ray, or gamma radiation.
• Renormalization theory: explains why there are some gaps in the energy levels. (For this, Feynman shared a Nobel prize).
• Between the strata, there is nothing observable.

Natural system evolves from the bottom-up.

• Self-organized (going up as the energy level drops)

• The energy stratification of interactions is important, because that's what is observable to physicists.
• Interactions between systems (atoms) leave observable traces.
• What happens (i.e. observables) is always local. They are unique, only at the here-and-now.

• Several types of patterns exist.
• Information (as Shannon-Weaver).
• Patterns will form intelligence: a sequence of events.
• Patterns of events are a rearrangement of the information.
• Looking for invariants, because we believe that nature is governed by laws.

• e.g. Newton had a story about gravity -- it's not observable, and is a law of science.
• Universal gravitation and the space-time continuum replaces the law of gravity, also which noone has ever seen.
• Unlike natural law, where we observe gravity.

• 3 processes in hierarchization:

1. Original elements that interact with each other, and yield a new system (emergent).
2. Synergetic process:
• Characteristics of the original elements, and characteristics of the emergent system.
• In quantum mechanics, the "become entangled" or "enslaved".
• (Several Noble prizes in entanglement, e.g Eigen and Schuster)
• Cyclical elements which brings closure to the process: a dynamic process e.g. metabolic cycle, hypercycle.
• Creates a boundary
3. Appearance of the energy gap: difference between inside and outside.
• Gets an identity (at a point in time).
• Appearance of the system in the environment changes the environment: the proper energy density must exist.
• e.g. an electrical particle will produce an electrical field.

• Each strata enables the strata above it.

• Then, the effecting factor of the evolutionary process is quantal.
• e.g. quantal holography, from Walter Schemp: which is used in NMRI or MRI
• Can only explain by symmetry breaks in going from one quantum to the next.
• This leaves no traces, because no interactions.

• Characteristic is that it interacts cognitively with other things.

• Universe with an external boundary is mythology.
• e.g. this is why we can't forecast the future: need to look at interactions with something else, that is outside the system.

Discussion

• Can crack the atom, but dynamism is lost.

• Well-trained physicists do. They need to know the history of physics, to understand that an idea is not preposterous, just outside of the current definitions of a field.