A definition for emergence

October 6, 2009 Sorin Adam Matei

: Image by VRider goes Web3D via Flickr

Tim Burke, a professor at Swarthmore, defines emergence in these terms… (The article is quite useful for those interested in virtual world and artificial societies. Especially if you heard about Epstein’s work).

“Emergence” is a difficult concept to grasp and employ. In some formulations, it comes close to being a truism, or so broad as to be virtually meaningless. In both artificial societies and virtual world research, however, the concept tends to be more specifically defined and used. The basic core of the idea, that emergence is defined by the formation of complex patterns or systems from simple initial conditions without any governing or controlling blueprint or design, is generally coupled with an interest specifically in cases of emergence that involve rule-driven agents that act independently and simultaneously within and upon an environment which is distinct from the agents.

For researchers working on artificial societies, the concept of emergence and related ideas is explicitly invoked and foundational to the distinction between artificial societies simulations and other kinds of social-science modeling. Emergence is taken both as a sign of the resemblance between artificial society simulations and the real world, and as a protection against tautological manipulation of the simulation. If a given simulation can produce complex behaviors or patterns from simple agent-based starting conditions, many artificial society researchers take that as a reasonable confirmation that real-world complexities of a similar kind have followed a similar process of evolutionary development. via HTML version of my DiGRA paper « Easily Distracted.