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.
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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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As far as I'm aware, such properties can be comfortably explained with current understanding of molecular dynamics, chemistry etc.
But I know i sometimes use words recklessly, so I wouldn't be surprised if my internal definition of an "emergent property" doesn't match consensus.
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Maybe the definition and mechanisms of emergent properties are clear for microbiological and chemical systems, but they sure aren’t for sociocultural systems! Nevertheless, we persist.
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They certainly aren't uniformly clear, regardless of domain, but I do think they are sometimes explicable.
But yes, as close to a scientific background as I get is psychology or, recently, linguistics, where emergent is usually the functional equivalent of "a wizard did it".