On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 8:33 PM, russell standish<r.stand...@unsw.edu.au> wrote: > On Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 10:16:55AM -0700, glen e. p. ropella wrote: >> The question was: Is there any identifiable property of a system that is >> NOT an emergent property, regardless of how one defines "system"? If >> anyone knows of one, please name it! > > Absolutely! The positions of the particles in a Newtonian n-body system > are not emergent. Of course there are other properties of these > systems that are emergent, but position & momenta of the particles are > not amongst them, being part of the basic vocabulary of the model.
OK, so aren't the positions and velocities of the particles a consequence of the forces affecting the particles? Is saying something is a consequence the same as saying it is an emergent property? Or is this concequence too well defined, which brings us back to "emergent" means "poorly understood"? I'm not sure why I'm even playing this game, since I don't think its helpful to say that everything is an emergent property of something... because of course it is... because everything in the universe is made of math. ~~James ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
