“Emergence” a students’ summary.
My appreciation for “emergence” is a natural outgrowth of decades worth of proactive learning via the flow of fascinating new findings that Earth scientists, from geology to biology, to complex systems science, share with the world.
It seems self-evident to me that we can see emergence on a grand scale throughout the history of evolution, and also on the fine scale of my own mind and watching how accumulating understanding reaches certain breakthrough thresholds that have elevated my overall thinking to entirely new levels of (previously unimaginable) appreciation.
As a youth I accepted the Biblical reassurance: “Seek and ye shall find,” with time I discovered it’s a fundamental rule of nature. Pay attention, remember, process your experiences and findings, then, once in a while, something goes pop, a veil drops and a whole new vista of understanding opens up. To be folded into the rest of my understanding and echoed throughout my mindscape, where it blends in and retunes the previous state of affairs.
Or to put it more simply, it feels to me like education and increasing knowledge of Earth’s evolution produces it’s own cascade of emergent awarenesses within our minds. For those paying attention, that is.
I bring it up because while surfing Google and YouTube for this C.A.R. project, I was surprised by some of the cynicism directed towards the notion of emergence and evolution. Seems founded on misunderstanding, often willful, sometimes not. All of it should be vulnerable to thoughtful, tactical, constructive, intellectual confrontation. Unless we are changing minds, we are losing.
Figure out how to take every cynical challenge and flip it around to a learning opportunity. (The act of doing it, will teach you more, than you might be able to teach them.)
The confusion about "emergence" inspired me to collect this selection of YouTube videos that presents a variety of people, with varying expertise, explaining “emergence” within our physical reality, in a sober constructive manner. I’ve also added some papers, though if you’re still interested in the topic by then, it’s time to visit GoogleScholar.
Besides informing, hopefully this introduction to “Emergence” might inspire and help some with their own assignments.
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“Emergence” - A Handy Student Summary and Resources
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Emergence (or: How Ants Find Your Picnic Basket): Jane Adams at TEDxGallatin
September 22, 2013 - TEDx Talks - 9:24 min
Jane Adams is a graduate of the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Her studies focused on the theory of emergence, the phenomenon by which simple systems governed by simple rules give rise to complex phenomena on a larger scale.
