[FRIAM] words RE: words

[Nick Thompson]

Lee, 

 

I am perfectly happy that an argument cannot embrace every extreme case.
Reductio ad absurdum has never seemed to me a conclusive form of argument.

 

I looked up "phase transition", which one wise source defined as "a
transition ... in phase."  Wikipedia was a little wiser.

 

During a phase transition of a given medium, certain properties of the
medium change, often discontinuously, as a result of the change of external
conditions, such as temperature, pressure, or others.

 

Or perhaps more broadly: a situation in which small changes in an
independent variable make a tremendous difference in dependent ones; Or:
small changes at one level of organization produce a reorganization at the
next, higher, level.  If so, there are some wonderful descriptions of phase
transitions in Bill Buford's Among the Thugs, which documents how skillful
organizers catalyze violence in football mobs.  

 

But these definitions seem also to be perfectly applicable to "emergence".
In other words, "phase transition" is another name for the phenomenon we
call "emergence."  But to say that emergence and phase transitions are the
same thing does not tell us why they occur?  

 

So, we come back to the question, is "emergence" "merely" a psychological
phenomenon, a situation in which human expectations are violated, in which
case emergence can be eliminated by understanding.  Or is it more than that?
Here's an example.  As you bring the temperature of water down from 40
degrees, at 37 degrees F, the density curve reverses and water starts become
less dense.  It still pours like water.  It's still wet like water.  Not
until a few degrees cooler does it begin to congeal.  Now, where is the
phase transition, here?  Or are there two.  

 

Now the person who asked me, essentially, to explain why I need an
explanation for "phase changes" in cellular automata, or anything else,
asked a fair question.  Why the hell shouldn't water increase decrease in
density in both directions from 37 degrees F?  Water can do whatever the
hell it wants, right?  My desire to call that an "emergent" is just another
name for the failure of my imagination, and doesn't refer to anything
inherently physical.  I hate that conclusion, but I keep being forced back
to it. 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of
lrudolph at meganet.net
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2019 6:22 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] words RE: words

 

> I only kinda like it because I would prefer something like: emergence 

> exists when the post-map language has a different expressibility than 

> the pre-map language.

 

Surely not *simply* "different"?  If the post-map language has strictly less
expressibility than the pre-map language, does "emergence exist"? 

Well, maybe.  What if (the extreme case) it has NO expressibility?

 

Either of those would fit under that other proposed description, "phase
transition", but (to me) the informal notion of "emergence" just can't
include the extreme case, and probably shouldn't include the "strictly less"
case (but maybe I could be argued out of that "shouldn't").

 

 

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