[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] Emergent Phenomena in Social Sciences -- An Elementary Primer

Wed Oct 9 13:42:48 PDT 2024

 Thank you for the more in-depth explanation, Ted.
-- Bob Primak 

    On Wednesday, October 9, 2024 at 12:41:50 PM EDT, Ted Kochanski <tedpkphd at gmail.com> wrote:  

 All,
 While Wikipedia can be criticized for many things it often provides a nice [if over simplified] summary of a complex field -- the reader is of course encouraged to pursue the typically large number of references for more
Here's a couple of quotes from the Wikipedia on Emergence

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole.

Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry and physics...

Definitions
[edit]
This concept of emergence dates from at least the time of Aristotle.[3] The many scientists and philosophers[4] who have written on the concept include John Stuart Mill (Composition of Causes, 1843)[5] and Julian Huxley[6] (1887–1975).

The philosopher G. H. Lewes coined the term "emergent" in 1875, distinguishing it from the merely "resultant":

Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same – their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference...[7][8]

Strong and weak emergence
[edit]Further information: Emergent materialism and Reductive materialism
Usage of the notion "emergence" may generally be subdivided into two perspectives, that of "weak emergence" and "strong emergence". One paper discussing this division is Weak Emergence, by philosopher Mark Bedau. In terms of physical systems, weak emergence is a type of emergence in which the emergent property is amenable to computer simulation or similar forms of after-the-fact analysis (for example, the formation of a traffic jam, the structure of a flock of starlings in flight or a school of fish, or the formation of galaxies). Crucial in these simulations is that the interacting members retain their independence. If not, a new entity is formed with new, emergent properties: this is called strong emergence, which it is argued cannot be simulated, analysed or reduced...[citation needed]

Objective or subjective quality
[edit]
Crutchfield regards the properties of complexity and organization of any system as subjective qualities determined by the observer.

Defining structure and detecting the emergence of complexity in nature are inherently subjective, though essential, scientific activities. Despite the difficulties, these problems can be analysed in terms of how model-building observers infer from measurements the computational capabilities embedded in non-linear processes. An observer's notion of what is ordered, what is random, and what is complex in its environment depends directly on its computational resources: the amount of raw measurement data, of memory, and of time available for estimation and inference. The discovery of structure in an environment depends more critically and subtly, though, on how those resources are organized. The descriptive power of the observer's chosen (or implicit) computational model class, for example, can be an overwhelming determinant in finding regularity in data.[14]

The low entropy of an ordered system can be viewed as an example of subjective emergence: the observer sees an ordered system by ignoring the underlying microstructure (i.e. movement of molecules or elementary particles) and concludes that the system has a low entropy.[15] On the other hand, chaotic, unpredictable behaviour can also be seen as subjective emergent, while at a microscopic scale the movement of the constituent parts can be fully deterministic.

In science
[edit]
In physics, emergence is used to describe a property, law, or phenomenon which occurs at macroscopic scales (in space or time) but not at microscopic scales, despite the fact that a macroscopic system can be viewed as a very large ensemble of microscopic systems.[16][17]

An emergent behavior of a physical system is a qualitative property that can only occur in the limit that the number of microscopic constituents tends to infinity.[18]

According to Robert Laughlin,[11] for many-particle systems, nothing can be calculated exactly from the microscopic equations, and macroscopic systems are characterised by broken symmetry: the symmetry present in the microscopic equations is not present in the macroscopic system, due to phase transitions. As a result, these macroscopic systems are described in their own terminology, and have properties that do not depend on many microscopic details...

Theoretical physicist PW Anderson states it this way:

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts.[20]

Meanwhile, others have worked towards developing analytical evidence of strong emergence. Renormalization methods in theoretical physics enable physicists to study critical phenomena that are not tractable as the combination of their parts.[21] In 2009, Gu et al. presented a class of infinite physical systems that exhibits non-computable macroscopic properties.[22][23] More precisely, if one could compute certain macroscopic properties of these systems from the microscopic description of these systems, then one would be able to solve computational problems known to be undecidable in computer science. These results concern infinite systems, finite systems being considered computable. However, macroscopic concepts which only apply in the limit of infinite systems, such as phase transitions and the renormalization group, are important for understanding and modeling real, finite physical systems. Gu et al. concluded that

Although macroscopic concepts are essential for understanding our world, much of fundamental physics has been devoted to the search for a 'theory of everything', a set of equations that perfectly describe the behavior of all fundamental particles. The view that this is the goal of science rests in part on the rationale that such a theory would allow us to derive the behavior of all macroscopic concepts, at least in principle. The evidence we have presented suggests that this view may be overly optimistic. A 'theory of everything' is one of many components necessary for complete understanding of the universe, but is not necessarily the only one. The development of macroscopic laws from first principles may involve more than just systematic logic, and could require conjectures suggested by experiments, simulations or insight.[22]

The formation of complex symmetrical and fractal patterns in snowflakes exemplifies emergence in a physical system.

Ted

References
[edit]   
   - ^ O'Connor, Timothy; Wong, Hong Yu (February 28, 2012). "Emergent Properties". In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition).
   - ^ Hartmann, Nicolai (2013). Possibility and actuality. Translated by Adair, Stephanie and Scott, Alex. Walter De Gruyter. p. 223. doi:10.1515/9783110246681. ISBN 9783110246681.    "The higher nexus is, in many of its structural elements, dependent on the lower, but is autonomous in its particular nature (its categorial novum). The chain of conditions of a real thing in the higher stratum contains an ample number of components from the lower strata; but they are only partial aspects of it, and therefore do not make its real possibility complete; they make it, in fact, neither necessary nor actual. The chain becomes complete only through the addition of real components of its own stratum. But these are under a categorially different kind of determination. Structurally, they belong to the higher real nexus itself, and are not found outside of it."
   - ^ Aristotle, Metaphysics (Aristotle), Book VIII (Eta) 1045a 8–10: "... the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts ...", i.e., the whole is other than the sum of the parts.
   - ^ Winning, Jason; Bechtel, William (2019). "Being emergence vs. pattern emergence: complexity, control, and goal-directedness in biological systems". In Gibb, Sophie; Hendry, Robin Findlay; Lancaster, Tom (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Emergence. Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy. Abingdon: Routledge. p. 134. ISBN 9781317381501. Retrieved 25 October 2020.    "Emergence is much discussed by both philosophers and scientists."
   - ^ "The chemical combination of two substances produces, as is well known, a third substance with properties entirely different from those of either of the two substances separately, or of both of them taken together."
   - ^ Julian Huxley: "now and again there is a sudden rapid passage to a totally new and more comprehensive type of order or organization, with quite new emergent properties, and involving quite new methods of further evolution" (Huxley & Huxley 1947, p. 120)
   - ^ Lewes, George Henry (1875). Problems of Life and Mind. First Series: The Foundations of a Creed. Vol. 2. Boston: Osgood. p. 369. Retrieved 24 Mar 2019.
   - ^ Blitz 1992.
   - ^ Chalmers, David J. (2002). "Strong and Weak Emergence" [1] Republished in P. Clayton and P. Davies, eds. (2006) The Re-Emergence of Emergence. Oxford: Oxford University Press
   - ^ Jump up to:   a    b    c    d Bedau 1997.
   - ^ Jump up to:   a    b Laughlin 2005.
   - ^ Luisi, Pier L. (2006). The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-0521821179. Archived from the original on 2015-11-17.
   - ^ Kim, Jaegwon (2006). "Emergence: Core ideas and issues". Synthese. 151 (3): 547–59. doi:10.1007/s11229-006-9025-0. S2CID 875121.
   - ^ Crutchfield, James P. (1993). "The Calculi of Emergence: Computation, Dynamics, and Induction". Physica. 75 (1–3). Utrecht (published 1994): 11–54. Bibcode:1994PhyD...75...11C. doi:10.1016/0167-2789(94)90273-9. Retrieved 24 Mar 2019.
   - ^ See f.i. Carlo Rovelli: The mystery of time, 2017, part 10: Perspective, p.105-110
   - ^ Anderson, Philip W. (2018-03-09). Basic Notions Of Condensed Matter Physics. CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-429-97374-1.
   - ^ Girvin, Steven M.; Yang, Kun (2019-02-28). Modern Condensed Matter Physics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-57347-4.
   - Kivelson, Sophia; Kivelson, Steve (2016). "Defining Emergence in Physics". npj Quantum Materials. 1. Nature Research. doi:10.1038/npjquantmats.2016.24
   - Koestler 1969.
   - Anderson 1972.
   - Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël; Pocheville, Arnaud (2012-01-01). "From bottom-up approaches to levels of organization and extended critical transitions". Frontiers in Physiology. 3: 232. doi:10.3389/fphys.2012.00232. PMC 3429021. PMID 22934001.
   - Gu, Mile; et al. (2009). "More really is different". Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena. 238 (9):835 arXiv:0809.0151. Bibcode:2009PhyD..238..835G. doi:10.1016/j.physd.2008.12.016. S2CID 61197980.

On Wed, Oct 9, 2024 at 11:06 AM Robert Primak via LCTG <lctg at lists.toku.us> wrote:

I was asked to post an explainer for the concept of an "emergent phenomenon" as used in experimental psychology research.  My understanding is only a little post-secondary, but here is what I can derive from what I think I was hearing today: 
Emergence in Social Groups and in BrainsWhy is the whole sometimes LESS than the sum of its parts?(2013)https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-thought/201310/emergence-in-social-groups-and-in-brains 
"Emergence takes place when the whole is more than the sum of its parts. More carefully: A property is emergent when it belongs to a whole but not to its parts, and is not just an aggregate of the properties of the parts because it results from the interactions of the parts."
(One of the questions in the video's discussion was about the deprecation of the functions of individual neurons as their connections into brain functions increase in complexity, at least in birds. This is popularized as the "pruning of connections" as brains mature. The reality of brain maturation is more dynamic and more complex.) 
A macro-scale type of "Cadence Problem" in Brain Science:(This is not the Cadence Problem with neural arrays, which Dr. Hopfield is investigating.)
"According to a new study the quick, athletic learners among us really are built differently – inside their brains: quick learners took about a minute to adjust and develop a comfortable walking cadence on the treadmill, the slower group took four times as long"
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1edeaxq/according_to_a_new_study_the_quick_athletic/?rdt=40756 
This appears to be a concrete example of an emergent property in human behavior and brain function.
Disclaimer: I do not have anywhere near the level of education or experience which the target audience of this video may be assumed to possess. 
-- Bob Primak 

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