The most surprising lesson we have learned from simulating complex physical systems on computers is that complex behavior need not have complex roots. Indeed, tremendously interesting and beguilingly complex behavior can emerge from collections of extremely simple components. -- Chris Langton

In these systems, agents residing on one scale start producing behavior that lies one scale above them: ants create colonies; urbanites create neighborhoods; simple pattern-recognition software learns how to recommend new books. The movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication is what we call emergence.
-- Steven Johnson

In A Nutshell: Living, self-organizing systems develop from the bottom up, within the context of their environment.

In The Lab

Boids is a java applet demonstrating the pioneering program of the same name (from 1986), which was one of the first models of emergent complex behavior.

Complexity and Self Organization provides an introduction to the basic concepts in the field of complexity science. (pdf)

Exploring Emergence is a fun site that uses interactive applets to explore examples of emergent behavior.

In The World

The World Wide Web and Wikipedia are two great examples of emergent phenomena.

Using Emergence to Take Social
Innovation to Scale - an article by Margaret Wheatley, founder of the Berkana Institute. (pdf)

Command and (Out of) Control: The Military Implications of Complexity Theory - a presentation at a 2-day symposium sponsored by The National Defense University and the RAND Corporation in November 1996. 

Complexity and Chaos in Nursing is a journal focused on using the paradigms of chaos and complexity to develop new concepts and theories for the field of nursing.

© Dave Higgins