Q: Is "emergence" (as in "emergent property") a real thing, or just a cover term for complex interactions we don't understand?
Often it seems like it could be substituted by the phrase "then something magic happens".
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Pretty sure it's both. It's explicable in a lot of physical science (causal chains for chemical reactions etc.), and as a philosophical construct, as far as I'm aware.
But the woo-woo "emergence" is of course different, and I'm pretty sure people use it that way in debates.
I was a student at the Santa Fe Institute’s Complex Systems Summer School in the early 90s. At least back then, emergent properties could be induced, observed and described, but not explained. Maybe it’s different nowadays, but I don’t think so. Still woo-woo.
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In that case, I may have to check my definitions again.
I understood emergent properties to include - for an abstract example - a compound having properties not present in any component element, but which can be explained by the molecular structure of the compound itself.
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