Emergence has become a popular buzzword, especially in artificial intelligence research. It’s a term frequently used by charlatans and pseudoscientists, so it’s worth unpacking what it actually means and why it’s important for understanding psychohistory.

What Is Emergence?

Simply put, emergence is a property of a complex system that cannot be directly predicted or “derived” from the properties of its individual components. For centuries, science was dominated by reductionism — the idea that if you break a complex object into parts and understand how those parts work, you’ll be able to understand the behavior of the whole.

Following this approach, we’ve learned that substances consist of molecules, molecules of atoms, atoms of nuclei and electrons, and nuclei of quarks and gluons. Modern physics aims to create a “theory of everything” that would describe the behavior of all subatomic particles. But would that really be everything? Or was Marx right when he spoke of the transition from quantity to quality?

By the 20th century, it became clear that even with complete knowledge of the laws of nature at one level, we can’t always reconstruct the next. One reason for this is symmetry breaking.

Take a single atom. It is symmetrical — like a perfect sphere, all directions are equivalent. But when you take many such atoms, they can form a crystal, where preferred directions appear and the substance’s properties change. The crystal is less symmetrical, but it gains new qualities that individual atoms didn’t have.

Another example comes from chemistry. A sugar molecule can (very simply) be described as a spiral. In laboratory synthesis, both left- and right-handed spirals can form. But in living organisms, we find only one type — the other can be deadly (as in the case of thalidomide). So the symmetry that exists at the chemical level is broken at the biological level.

Emergence and Philosophy of Science

If we accept the existence of emergent properties, it changes how we approach the study of nature.

Reality turns out not to be uniform, but layered and hierarchically structured. Each level, though grounded in the one beneath it, has its own structure, dynamics, and patterns — and requires its own scientific tools, both mathematical and philosophical.

For instance, high-energy physics studies subatomic particles, while chemistry studies the behavior of molecules. Although chemical processes can be explained in terms of physics, that doesn’t mean that knowing physics is enough to “derive” chemistry. Even in a future where we have a complete “theory of everything,” chemistry will remain an independent science with its own questions.

The same holds true for biology, sociology, and cognitive science. Moreover, one can propose that each higher level is largely independent from the one below it. For example, both humans and ants solve complex problems — so cognitive science must use concepts broad enough to describe both.

In computer science, it’s often irrelevant whether you’re dealing with an electronic, quantum, or Babbage’s mechanical computer — the principlesremain the same.

If we extend these ideas further, we might suggest that psychohistory — as a science of large human collectives — should be largely indifferent to individual human traits such as free will, emotions, and so on.

Source:
Anderson, P. W. (1972). More Is Different: Broken symmetry and the nature of the hierarchical structure of science. Science, 177(4047), 393–396.