Thus spake Victoria Hughes circa 09-07-09 11:21 AM: > What about properties that show up (a synonym for 'emerge') in one > system but also show up in other systems. Many things reposition when in > combination with other things/dynamics. Does this mean that all those > repositionings are emergent? Or just a physical law that applies across > a range of systems?
Heh, your language will easily draw us into into using "emergent" as if it has meaning. ;-) I don't like the word "property" for this context. So, I'll use "characteristic". Characteristics exhibited by measuring a particular system with a particular measure can show up when one applies the same measure to a different system. Hence, I'd say that two distinct systems that exhibit the same characteristic under the same measure are members of a set (class, family, range, group, whatever term you like) defined by that measure. Similarly, the two distinct systems can show _similar_ characteristics when two distinct measures are applied. In that ambiguous case, it's up to the observer to tease out whether the characteristics are similar because the systems are members of a well-defined set (i.e. a better measure can be defined that makes the set coherent) _or_ whether the characteristics are similar just because the measures are similar. But more to your point, it's reasonable that one component of a system is somehow canalizing under particular measures. Hence, if that component is present in several distinguishable systems, then applying those measures to all those systems shows the characteristics associated with that dominant component. As long as that component _requires_ a system in which to live (i.e. the measures can't be applied to the component, only to the system containing the component, which is true in all non-trivial situations), then the characteristics are still "emergent", even though we reasonably and abstractly reduce the cause to the component. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ 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
