From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Sun Oct 27 2002 - 17:27:07 GMT
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for this. Could you possibly go one step further and explain how this
emergent quality or pattern can then be a foundation for a 'higher' system?
(This request may reveal a misunderstanding in itself) If the answer is in
your essay, I'm headed in that direction.
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan B. Marder" <jonathan.marder@newmail.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 27, 2002 3:54 PM
Subject: RE: MD EVOLUTION TO COMPLEXITY (hiatus interuptus)
> Hi Roger (Paco), Patrick, Platt and all,
>
> Thanks for reviving an important topic. I think Patrick and Platt
> understand "emergent property" in a very non-scientific way, which
> rather kills the discussion.
>
> Let me try and explain it to them with the following dice throwing
> exercise:
>
> 1. Take a single die, throw it several dozen times and record the result
> each time.
> 2. Make a histogram of how many times each number came up.
>
> The histogram should be roughly flat (all columns about the same
> height), because the dice throw is "random".
>
> 3. Now repeat the exercise with two dice, on each throw recording only
> the total.
> 4. Make the histogram for all possible scores (2 to 12).
>
> If you did enough throws, you will see that the histogram has a very
> definite shape to it. You should find that 7 comes up the most, and 2 or
> 12 the least. There is a very definite pattern that looks NON-random.
> (BTW, I saw this exercise done very nicely by a third grader as a
> science project).
>
> I would call the pattern that emerged in this example an EMERGENT
> pattern.
> What is interesting is that this is very mechanistic - it is easy to
> understand WHY the pattern emerges, yet each die behaves in a "random",
> "purposeless" way.
>
> This is similar to the way the Gas Laws emerge from the random movements
> of individual gas molecules (see my End of Causality essay on the MoQ
> web site). It is also the mechanistic explanation for biological
> evolution, including the behaviour of an ant colony.
>
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
>
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