DRAFT 10/17/2008

Emergence Explained: Entities

Getting epiphenomena to do real work
Russ Abbott
Department of Computer Science, California State University, Los Angeles
and
The Aerospace Corporation
Russ.Abbott@GMail.com
Abstract. We apply the notions developed in the preceding paper ([1]) to issues such as:
the nature of entities, the fundamental importance of interactions between entities and
their environment, the central and often ignored role (especially in computer science) of
energy, the aggregation of complexity, and the limitations of modeling.

1 Introduction
In [1] we characterized emergent phenomena as phenomena that may be described inde-
pendently of their implementations. We distinguished between static emergence (emer-
gence that is implemented by energy wells) and dynamic emergence (emergence that is
implemented by energy flows). We argued that emergence (of both forms) produces ob-
jectively real phenomena (because they are distinguishable by their entropy and mass
characteristics) but that interaction among emergent phenomena is epiphenomenal and
can always be reduced to the fundamental forces of physics. Our focus in that paper was
on the phenomenon of emergence itself. In this paper we explore the two types of emer-
gence, focusing especially on dynamic emergence.

1.1 Entities
As human beings we naturally seem to think in terms of entities—things or objects. Yet
the question of how one might characterize what should and should not be considered an
entity is still unresolved as a philosophical issue. (See [Boyd], [Laylock], [Miller],
[Rosen], [Varzi Fall ‘04].)
We propose to define a physically based entity as an instance of emergence. This corres-
pond to our intuitive sense for how we think about entities in a great many cases. Physic-
al entities (such as an atom, a molecule, a pencil, a table, a solar system, a galaxy) are all
instances of static emergence. These entities are held together in energy wells of various
sorts. Biological entities (such as you and I) and social entities (such as a social club, a
corporation, or a country) are instances of dynamic emergence. These entities all exist as
a result of energy flows of various sorts. (We examine many of the preceding examples in
more detail below.)
On the other hand, what might be considered conceptual (or Platonic) entities such as
numbers, mathematical sets (and other mathematical constructs), properties, relations,
propositions, categories named by common nouns (such as “cat”), and ideas in general
are not instances of emergence. Nor are literary products such as poems and novels, sci-
entific papers, or computer programs (when considered as texts). Time instances (e.g.,
midnight 31 December 1999), durations (e.g., a minute), and segments (e.g., the 20 th cen-
tury) are also not instances of emergence. Neither are the comparable constructs with re-

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spect to space and distance. An entity as we define it always consists at least in part of
matter—which is arranged to implement some independently describable abstraction.
Since none of the preceding conceptual entities involve matter, none of them are physical
entities according to our definition.1

1.2 What does it mean to describe an entity?

As suggested by our definition of emergence, there are two ways to describe an entity.
1. In terms of its interaction with its environment (including its response to measure-
ment instruments)—i.e., a description given in terms of its observed (or desired)
properties and behavior. When done more rigorously, this becomes a formal specifica-
tion.
2. In terms of its internal structure and operation, i.e., its implementation.
The agenda of most of science—and of petty reductionism2 in particular—has been to
show how an understanding of entities from the second perspective explains why they ap-
pear and behave as they do from the first perspective. In this paper we take a closer look
at the first perspective focusing in particular on how entities interact with their environ-
ment. An entity’s interaction with its environment is particularly important for dynamic
entities, which depend on their environments to provide the energy that enable them to
persist.

2 Static entities
Statically emergent entities (static entities for short) are created when the fundamental
forces of nature bind matter together. The nucleus of any atom (other than simple Hydro-
gen, whose nucleus consist of a single proton) is a static entity. It results from the applica-
tion of the strong nuclear force, which binds the nucleons together in the nucleus. Simil-
arly any atom (the nucleus along with the atom’s electrons) is also a static entity. An atom
is a consequence of the electromagnetic force, which binds the atom’s electrons to its
nucleus. Molecules are also bound together by the electromagnetic force. On a much lar-
ger scale, astronomical bodies, e.g., the earth, are bound together by gravity, as are solar
systems and galaxies.
Like all entities, static entities have properties which may be described independently of
how they are constructed. As Weinberg [W] points out, “a diamond [may be described in
terms of its hardness even though] it doesn't make sense to talk about the hardness … of
individual ‘elementary’ particles.” The hardness of a diamond may be characterized and
measured independently of how diamonds achieve that property—which as Weinberg
also points out is a consequence of how diamonds are implemented, namely, their “car-
bon atoms … can fit together neatly.”
A distinguishing feature of static entities (as with static emergence in general) is that the
mass of any one of them is strictly smaller than the sum of the masses of its components.
This may be seen most clearly in nuclear fission and fusion, in which one starts and ends
with the same number of atomic components—electrons, protons, and neutrons—but

1
We explore the relationship between ideas and computation in [If a Tree].
2
Recall Weinberg characterization of petty reductionism as the “doctrine that things behave the way they
do because of the properties of their constituents.”

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which nevertheless converts mass into energy. This raises the obvious question: which
mass was converted to energy? The answer has to do with the strong nuclear force, which
implements what is called the “binding energy” of nucleons within a nucleus. For ex-
ample, a helium nucleus (also known as an alpha particle, two protons and two neutrons
bound together), which is one of the products of hydrogen fusion, has less mass than the
sum of the masses of the protons and neutrons that make it up.3 The missing mass is re-
leased as energy.
The same entity-mass relationship holds for all static entities. An atom or molecule has
less mass (by a negligible but real amount) than the sum of the masses of its components
taken separately. The solar system has less mass (by a negligible but real amount) than
the mass of the sun and the planets taken separately. Thus the entropy of these entities is
lower than the entropy of the components as an unorganized collection. In other words, a
static entity is distinguishable by the fact that it has lower mass and lower entropy than its
components taken separately. Static entities exist in what is often called an energy well;
they require energy to pull their components apart. Static entities are also at an energy
equilibrium.
Manufactured or constructed artifacts exhibit static emergence. The binding force that
holds manufactured static entities together is typically the electromagnetic force, which
we exploit when we use nails, glue, screws, etc. to bind static entities together into new
static entities. A house, for example, has the statically emergent property number-of-bed-
rooms, which is a property of (a way of describing) the house from the entity perspective.
A house implements the property of having a certain number of bedrooms by the way in
which it is constructed from its components.
A static entity consists of a fixed collection of components over which it supervenes. By
specifying the states and conditions of its components, one fixes the properties of the en-
tity. But static entities that undergo repair and maintenance, such as houses, no longer
consist of a fixed collection of component elements thereby raising the question of
whether such entities really do supervene over their components. We resolve this issue
when we discuss Theseus’ ship.

3 Dynamic entities
Dynamic entities are instances of dynamic emergence. Dynamic emergence occurs when
energy flows through and modifies an open system. As in the case with all emergence,
dynamic emergence results in the organization of matter in a way that differs from how it
would be organized without the energy flowing through it. That is, dynamic entities have
properties as entities that may be described independently of how those properties are im-
plemented. Dynamic entities include dissipative, biological, and social entities—and as
we discuss below, hurricanes. In many but not necessarily all cases, the very existence of
the dynamic entity as an entity—its reduced entropy and its increased mass—depends on
the flow of energy. In the case of dissipative entities, the entity would exist as a static en-
tity even when energy is not flowing through it.

3
It turns out that iron nuclei lack the most mass. Energy from fusion is possible for elements lighter than
iron; energy from fission is possible for elements heavier than iron.

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3.1 Dissipative entities

We begin with the relatively simple case in which a static entity becomes a dissipative en-
tity. In [Prigogine] (and elsewhere) Prigogine discusses what he calls dissipative struc-
tures. A dissipative structure is an organized pattern of activity within a constrained en-
vironment that is produced when an external source of energy is introduced into the con-
strained environment. A dissipative structure is so named because in maintaining its pat-
tern of activity it dissipates the energy supplied to it.
A static entity becomes dissipative when a stream of energy is pumped into it in such a
way that the energy disturbs the internal structure of the entity and then dissipates before
the static entity’s structure is destroyed. Musical instruments offer a nice range of ex-
amples. Some are very simple (direct a stream of air over the mouth of a soda bottle);
others are more acoustically complex (a violin). All are static entities that emit sounds
when energy is pumped into them. Another commonly cited example is the collection of
Rayleigh-Bénard convection patterns that form in a confined liquid when one surface is
heated and the opposite surface is kept cool. (See Figure 1.)
For a much larger example, consider how water is distributed over the earth. Water is
transported from place to place via processes that include evaporation, atmospheric
weather system movements, precipitation, groundwater flows, ocean current flows, etc.
Taken as a whole, these cycles may be understood as a dissipative structure which is
shaped by gravity and the earth’s fixed geographic structure and driven primarily by solar
energy, which is pumped into the earth’s atmosphere.
Our notion of a dissipative entity is broad enough to include virtually any energy-con-
suming device. Consider a digital clock. It converts an inflow of energy into an ongoing
series of structured activities—resulting in the display of the time. Does a digital clock
qualify as a dissipative entity? One may argue that since the design of a digital clock lim-
its the ways in which it can respond to the energy inflow it receives it should not be char-
acterized as a dissipative entity. But any static entity has only a limited number of ways
in which it can respond to an inflow of energy. We suggest that it would be virtually im-
possible to formalize a principled distinction between Rayleigh-Bénard convection cycles
and the structured activities within a digital clock.4, 5
Just as emergent phenomena are typically limited to feasibility ranges, dissipative entities
also operate in distinct ways within various energy intensity ranges. Blow too gently into
a recorder; nothing happens. Blow too strongly; the recorder will break. Within the range
in which sounds are produced, different intensities will produce either the intended
sounds or unintended squeaks. Thus dissipative entities exhibit phases and phase trans-
itions that depend on the intensity of the energy they encounter. The primary concern
about global warming, for example, is not that the temperature will rise by a degree or
two—although the melting of the ice caps is potentially destructive—but the possibility
that a phase transition will occur and that the overall global climate structure, including

4
Another common example of a dissipative structure is the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction, which in
some ways is a chemical watch. We designed digital clocks to tell time. We didn’t design BZ reactions to tell time.
Yet in some sense they both do. That one surprises us and the other doesn’t shouldn’t mislead us into putting them
into different categories of phenomena.
5
In all our examples, the form in which energy is delivered also matters. An electric current will produce
different effects from a thermal energy source when introduced into a digital clock and a Rayleigh-Bénard device.

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atmospheric and oceanic currents, will change disastrously. When energy is flowing
through it, a dissipative entity is by definition far from equilibrium. So a dissipative entity
is a static entity that is maintained in a far-from-equilibrium state.

3.2 Hurricanes as dynamic entities

Most dynamic entities are biological or social, but there are some naturally occurring dy-
namic entities that are neither. Probably the best known are hurricanes. A hurricane oper-
ates as a heat engine in which condensation—which replaces combustion as the source of
heat—occurs in the upper atmosphere. A hurricane involves a greater than normal pres-
sure differential between the ocean surface and the upper atmosphere. That pressure dif-
ferential causes warm moist surface air to rise. When the moisture-laden air reaches the
upper atmosphere, which is cooler, it condenses, releasing heat. The heat warms the air
and reduces the pressure, thereby maintaining the pressure differential.6 (See Figure 3.)
Hurricanes are objectively recognizable as entities. They have reduced entropy—hur-
ricanes are quite well organized—and because of the energy flowing through them, they
have more mass than their physical components (the air and water molecules making
them up) would have on their own. Hurricanes illustrate the case of a dynamic entity with
no static structure. When a hurricane loses its external source of energy—typically by
moving over land—the matter of which it’s composed is no longer bound together into an
organized structure. The hurricane’s entropy rises and its excess mass—in the form of the
energy flowing through it—dissipates until it no longer exists as an entity.

3.3 Petty reductionism fails—for all practical purposes

Hurricanes illustrate a difficulty with petty reductionism. Petty reductionism is another
way of saying that an entity supervenes over the matter of which it is composed: fixing
the properties of the matter of which an entity is composed fixes the properties of the en-
tity.7
When one considers dynamic entities such as a hurricane a problem arises. From moment
to moment new matter is incorporated into a hurricane and matter then in a hurricane
leaves it. Consider the smallest collection of matter over which a hurricane supervenes.
Call that the hurricane’s supervenience base. A hurricane’s supervenience base consists of
the entire collection of matter that is part of a hurricane over its lifetime. On intuitive
grounds it would seem that a hurricane’s supervenience base must be significantly larger
than the amount of matter that constitutes a hurricane at any moment. Because a hur-
ricane’s supervenience base is so much larger than the matter that makes it up at any mo-
ment the fact that a hurricane supervene over its supervenience base is not very useful.
Other than tracking all the matter in a hurricane’s supervenience base, there is no easy re-
ducibility equation that maps the properties of a hurricane’s supervenience base onto
properties of the hurricane itself.

6
A characterization of a hurricane as a vertical heat engine may be found in Wikipedia. (URL as of
9/1/2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane.) The hurricane description is paraphrased from NASA, “Hur-
ricanes: The Greatest Storms on Earth,” (URL as of 3/2005 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Hurricanes/.)
7
Recall that a set of higher level predicates is said to supervene over a set of lower level predicates if a
configuration of truth values for the lower level predicates determines the truth values for the higher level predic-
ates. We are using the term supervene loosely to say that an entity supervenes over its components.

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Furthermore, the longer a hurricane persists, the larger its supervenience base. Much of
the matter in a hurricane’s supervenience base is likely also to be included in the super-
venience bases of other hurricanes. Like Weinberg’s example of quarks being composed
(at least momentarily) of protons, hurricanes are at least partially composed of each other.
Thus petty reductionism is not particularly useful for macro-level dynamic entities which
cycle matter through themselves—as most dynamic entities do.

3.4 Biological and social dynamic entities

Biological and social entities also depend on external energy sources. Photosynthesizing
plants depend on sunlight. Other biological entities depend on food whose energy re-
sources were almost always derived originally from the sun. Social entities may be organ-
ized along a number of different lines. In modern economies, money is a proxy for en-
ergy. Economic entities persist only so long as the amount of money they take in exceeds
the amount of money they expend. Political entities depend on the energy contributed—
either voluntarily, through taxes, or conscription—of their subjects. Smaller scale social
entities such as families, clubs, etc., depend on the contributions of their member. The
contributions may be voluntary, or they may result from implicit (social norms) or expli-
cit coercion.
No matter the immediate source of the energy or the nature of the components, biological
and social entities follow the same pattern we saw with hurricanes.
• They have reduced entropy (greater order) than their components would have on their
own.
• They depend on external sources of energy to stay in existence. Because of the energy
flowing through them, the have more mass than their components would on their
own.
• The material that makes them up changes with time. Their supervenience bases are
generally much larger than the material of which they are composed at any moment.
The longer a dynamic entity persists, the greater the difference. Petty reductionism
fails unless it becomes a historical narrative. One can tell the story of a country, for
example, as a history that depends in part on who its citizens are at various times. One
would have a difficult time constructing an equation that maps a country’s superveni-
ence base (which includes its citizens over all time) to its state at any moment unless
that mapping were in effect a historical record.
Even though dynamic entities persist in time, and even though the properties of dynamic
entities are a function of the properties of their components at any moment, since the
components of which a dynamic entity is composed change from time to time, there is no
direct way to map the properties of the components a dynamic entity will have over its
lifetime to the moment-to-moment properties of the entity itself except as a narrative, i.e.,
a story which describes which elements happen to become incorporated into the dynamic
entity at various moments during its lifetime.
All entities are subject to the effect of interactions with elements they encounter in their
environments. Dynamic entities are doubly vulnerable. They are also subject to having
their components replaced by other components. To persist they must have defenses
against infiltration by elements that once incorporated into their internal mechanisms may

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lead to their weakening or destruction. Social entities are more vulnerable still. Some of
their components (people) are simultaneously components of other social entities—often
resulting it divided loyalties.

3.5 Theseus’ ship

The notion of a social dynamic entity can help resolve the paradox of Theseus’s ship, a
mythical ship that was maintained (repaired, repainted, etc.) in the harbor at Athens for so
long that all of its original material was replaced. The paradox arises when one thinks of
Theseus’ ship as identical to the material of which it is composed at any moment. Any
modification to that ship, e.g., new paint, will change the material of which the ship is
composed. Since the repainted ship will consist of somewhat different material than the
ship consisted of before it was painted, is the repainted ship “the same ship” as it was be-
fore it was repainted?
This cycling of material through an entity wasn’t a problem when we were discussing
hurricanes or social or biological entities. In those cases we thought of the entity as in-
cluding not only its momentary physical components. The entity also included the energy
that was flowing through it along with means to slough off old material and to incorpor-
ate new material into its structure.
To apply the same perspective to Theseus’ ship, think of the physical ship along with the
maintenance process as a social entity. That social entity, like all social entities, is
powered by an external energy source. (Since the maintenance of Theseus’ ship is a gov-
ernmental or societal function, the energy source is either voluntary, conscripted, or taxa-
tion.) The ship maintenance entity uses energy from its energy source to do the mainten-
ance work on the ship. Just as the material that makes up a hurricane changes from time
to time and the people who are employed by a business change from time to time, the
physical ship also changes from time to time. But like a hurricane and a company, the
ship maintenance entity persists over time.

[Sidebar] Autonomy
The notion of an autonomy seems central to how we look at the world. Most people will
acknowledge that the kinds of entities that the biological and social sciences deal with
seem somehow different from those of physics and chemistry. A major part of that differ-
ence is the apparent ability of those entities to act on their own, i.e., their autonomy.
For millennia we have found it convenient to partition the world into two realms: the an-
imate and the inanimate. Elements of the inanimate world are ruled by, are subject to, and
are often victims of external forces. Elements of the animate world are capable of
autonomous action and seem to have some control over their fate. Recall that this is why
Brownian motion posed such a problem: how can inanimate particles look so much like
they are moving autonomously?
For the past half-millennium civilization has pursued, with significant success, the dream
of creating autonomous sources of action. We have built machines about which it can be
said that to varying degrees they act on their own. We do not yet confuse our machines
with biological life, and we have not yet managed to construct biological life “from
scratch.” But the boundaries between human artifacts, natural biological life, and hybrids

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of the two are becoming more and more subtle—and they are likely to disappear within
the lifetimes of many of us.
So, what do we mean by autonomy? In non-political contexts, the term autonomous is
taken to mean something like not controlled by outside forces. But any material entity is
subject to outside, i.e., physical, forces. Nothing is free from the laws of physics. Instead
of defining autonomy to require imperviousness to outside forces, it makes more sense to
understand autonomy to imply the ability to control—at least to some extent—how an en-
tity is affected by outside forces. Thus we suggest that an entity is autonomous to the ex-
tent that it shapes the way it is affected by outside forces.
But this is another way of looking at how we have defined a dynamic entity. Every dy-
namic entity is autonomous to some degree since they shape how the energy that flows
through them is used. Most biological and social entities do more than just shape the
“raw” energy flows that they encounter. Most biological and social entities are able to ac-
quire energy in some “frozen” form (such as food or money8) and to convert it to energy
as needed. Also, these entities often have an ability to seek out energy in their environ-
ments rather than just waiting for energy to be pumped into them. Furthermore, many of
these entities are capable of using many forms of energy and energy supplied at many
levels of intensity.
Thus the notion of autonomy seems to depend on the flexibility with which a dynamic
entity is able to deal with energy. It seems appropriate that autonomy should be tied to a
notion as fundamental as energy. In the previous article we noted that causality is always
reducible to the primitive forces of physics. An entity’s autonomy is therefore a measure
of the extent to which it is able to direct and control those fundamental forces—and
hence the extent to which it can influence causal relationships.

[Sidebar] Minimal dynamic entities

In [Kauffman] Kauffman asks what the basic characteristics are of what he calls
autonomous agents. He suggests that the ability to perform a thermodynamic (Carnot en-
gine) work cycle is fundamental. In what may turn out to be the same answer we suggest
looking for the minimal biological organism that perpetuates itself by consuming energy.
Bacteria seem to be too complex. Viruses and prions don’t consume energy. Hurricanes
aren’t biological. Is there anything in between? Such a minimal entity may help us under-
stand the yet-to-be-discovered transition from the inanimate to the animate.
Since self-perpetuation does not imply reproduction (as hurricanes illustrate), simple self-
perpetuating organisms may not be able to reproduce. That means that if they are to exist,
it must be relatively easy for them to come into being directly from inorganic materials.
Self-perpetuating organisms may not include any record—like DNA—of their design (as
hurricanes again illustrate). One wouldn’t expect to see evolution among such organisms
—at least not evolution that depends on modifications of such design descriptions.

[Sidebar] Thermodynamic computing: nihil ex nihilo

In Computer Science we assume that one can specify a Turing Machine, a Finite State
Automaton, a Cellular Automaton, or a piece of software, and it will do its thing—for
free. Turing machines run for free. Cellular Automata run for free. Gliders run for free.
8
The maxim follow the money is really advising that one find energy sources and sinks.

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Software in general runs for free. Even agents in agent-based models run for free. 9. Al-
though that may be a useful abstraction, we should recognize that we are leaving out
something important. In the real world one needs energy to drive processes. To run real
software in the real world requires a real computer, which uses real energy. A theory of
thermodynamic computation is needed to integrate the notions of energy, entities, and
computing. The problem is that the real energy that drives software is not visible to the
software itself. Software does not have to pay its own energy bill. Until we find a way to
integrate the real energy cost of running software into the software itself, we are unlikely
to build a successful artificial life model.

4 The environment
Consider the following from Weinberg.
[A]part from historical accidents that by definition cannot be ex-
plained, the [human] nervous system [has] evolved to what [it is] en-
tirely because of the principles of macroscopic physics and chemistry,
which in turn are what they are entirely because of the principles of
the standard model of elementary particles.
Note Weinberg’s reference to historical accidents—which we also saw earlier, in his
definition of grand reductionism.
Grand reductionism is … the view that all of nature is the way it is
(with certain qualifications about initial conditions and historical acci-
dents) because of simple universal laws, to which all other scientific
laws may in some sense be reduced.
Even though Weinberg gives historical accidents as important a role in shaping the world
as he does the principles of physics, he does so grudgingly, seemingly attempting to dis-
miss them in a throw-away subordinate clause. This is misleading, especially given Wein-
berg’s example—evolution. Contrary to his implication, the human nervous system (and
the designs of biological organisms in general) evolved as they did not primarily because
of the principles of physics and chemistry but primarily because of the environment in
which that evolution took place.

4.1 “Biology is concerned equally with mechanism and function.” 10

Like all dynamic entities, biological entities, depend on their environment for the energy
that perpetuates them. A fundamental feature of every biological entity is its ability to
find and (like all dynamic entities) to extract energy from its environment. This function-
ality is common to any description (any abstract specification) of any biological entity.
Simply by the way we defined a dynamic entity, it must be able to extract energy from its
environment.

9
Many agent-based and artificial life models acknowledge the importance of energy by imposing an artifi-
cial price for persistence, but we are not aware of any in which the cost of persistence is fully integrated into the
functioning of the entity.
10
Eric Jakobsson at the Understanding Complex Systems Symposium, University of Illinois, Champagne-
Urbana, Ill, May 2006.

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This really is not so foreign to elementary particle physics. The Pauli exclusion principle,
which prevents two fermions from occupying the same quantum state, formalizes a con-
straint the environment imposes on elementary particles.11
Functionalism too has an environmental focus. By definition functionality is a relation-
ship between something and its environment. As Fodor points out,
references to can openers, mousetraps, camshafts, calculators and
the like bestrew the pages of functionalist philosophy. To make a bet-
ter mousetrap is to devise a new kind of mechanism whose behavior
is reliable with respect to the high-level regularity “live mouse in,
dead mouse out.”
Thus although neither Weinberg nor Fodor focuses on this issue explicitly—in fact, they
both tend to downplay it—they both apparently agree that the environment within which
something exists is important.

4.2 What dynamic entities do vs. how dynamic entities work

In his talk at the 2006 Understanding Complex Systems Symposium Eric Jakobsson
made the point that biology must be equally concerned with what organisms do in their
worlds and the mechanisms that allow them to do it.

4.3 Stigmergy
Once one has autonomous entities (or agents) that persist in their environment, the ways
in which complexity can develop grows explosively. Prior to agents, to get something
new, one had to build it as a layer on top of some existing substrate. As we have seen,
nature has found a number of amazing abstractions along with some often surprising
ways to implement them. Nonetheless, this construction mechanism is relatively ponder-
ous. Layered hierarchies of abstractions are powerful, but they are not what one might
characterize as lightweight or responsive to change. Agents change all that.
Half a century ago, Pierre-Paul Grasse invented [Grasse] the term stigmergy to help de-
scribe how social insect societies function. The basic insight is that when the behavior of
an entity depends to at least some extent on the state of its environment, it is possible to
modify that entity’s behavior by changing the state of the environment. Grasse used the
term “stigmergy” for this sort of indirect communication and control. This sort of inter-
play between agents and their environment often produces epiphenomenal effects that are
useful to the agents. Often those effects may be understood in terms of formal abstrac-
tions. Sometimes it is easier to understand them less formally.
Two of the most widely cited examples of stigmergic interaction are ant foraging and bird
flocking. In ant foraging, ants that have found a food source leave pheromone markers
that other ants use to make their way to that food source. In bird flocking, each bird de-
termines how it will move at least in part by noting the positions and velocities of its
neighboring birds.
The resulting epiphenomena are that food is gathered and flocks form. Presumably these
epiphenomena could be formalized in terms of abstract effects that obeyed a formal set of
rules—in the same way that the rules for gliders and Turing Machines can abstracted
11
This was pointed out to me by Eshel Ben-Jacob [private communication].

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away from their implementation by Game of Life rules. But often the effort required to
generate such abstract theories doesn’t seem worth the effort—as long as the results are
what one wants.
Here are some additional examples of stigmergy.
• When buyers and sellers interact in a market, one gets market epiphenomena. Eco-
nomics attempts to formalize how those interactions may be abstracted into theories.
• We often find that laws, rules, and regulations have both intended and unintended
consequences. In this case the laws, rules, and regulations serve as the environment
within which agents act. As the environment changes, so does the behavior of the
agents.
• Both sides of the evo-devo (evolution-development) synthesis [Carroll] exhibit stig-
mergic emergence. On the “evo” side, species create environmental effects for each
other as do sexes within species.
• The “devo” side is even more stigmergic. Genes, the switches that control gene ex-
pression, and the proteins that genes produce when expressed all have environmental
effects on each other.
• Interestingly enough, the existence of gene switches was discovered in the investiga-
tion of another stigmergic phenomenon. Certain bacteria generate an enzyme to digest
lactose, but they do it only when lactose is present. How do the bacteria “know” when
to generate the enzyme?
It turns out to be simple. The gene for the enzyme exists in the bacteria, but its expres-
sion is normally blocked by a protein that is attached to the DNA sequence just before
the enzyme gene. This is called a gene expression switch.
When lactose is in the environment, it infuses into the body of the bacteria and binds to
the protein that blocks the expression of the gene. This causes the protein to detach
from the DNA thereby “turning on” the gene and allowing it to be expressed.
The lactose enzyme switch is a lovely illustration of stigmergic design. As we described
the mechanism above, it seems that lactose itself turns on the switch that causes the
lactose-digesting enzyme to be produced. If one were thinking about the design of such
a system, one might imagine that the lactose had been designed so that it would bind to
that switch. But of course, lactose wasn’t “designed” to do that. It existed prior to the
switch. The bacteria evolved a switch that lactose would bind to. So the lactose must be
understood as being part of the environment to which the bacteria adapted by evolving
a switch to which lactose would bind. How clever; how simple; how stigmergic!
• Cellular automata operate stigmergically. Each cell serves as an environment for its
neighbors. As we have seen, epiphenomena may include gliders and Turing Ma-
chines.
• Even the operation of the Turing Machine as an abstraction may be understood stig-
mergically. The head of a Turing Machine (the equivalent of an autonomous agent)
consults the tape, which serves as its environment, to determine how to act. By writ-
ing on the tape, it leaves markers in its environment to which it may return—not un-

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like the way foraging ants leave pheromone markers in their environment. When the
head returns to a marker, that marker helps the head determine how to act at that later
time.
• In fact, one may understand all computations as being stigmergic with respect to a
computer’s instruction execution cycle. Consider the following familiar code frag-
ment.

temp:= x;
x := y;
y := temp;

The epiphenomenal result is that x and y are exchanged. But this result is not a con-
sequence of any one statement. It is an epiphenomenon of the three statements being
executed in sequence by a computer’s instruction execution cycle.
Just as there in nothing in the rules of the Game of Life about gliders, there is nothing
in a computer’s instruction execution cycle about exchanging the values of x and y—or
about any other algorithm that software implements. Those effects are all epiphenomen-
al.
• The instruction execution cycle itself is epiphenomenal over the flow of electrons
through gates—which knows no more about the instruction execution cycle than the
instruction execution cycle knows about algorithms.
In all of the preceding examples it is relatively easy to identify the agent(s), the environ-
ment, and the resulting epiphenomena.

4.4 Design and evolution

It is not surprising that designs appear in nature. It is almost tautologous to say that those
things whose designs work in the environments in which they find themselves will persist
in those environments. This is a simpler (and more accurate) way of saying that it is the
fit—entities with designs that fit their environment—that survive.

4.5 The accretion of complexity

An entity that suits its environment persists in that environment. But anything that per-
sists in an environment by that very fact changes that environment for everything else.
This phenomenon is commonly referred to as an ever changing fitness landscape.
What has been less widely noted in the complexity literature is that when something is
added to an environment it may enable something else to be added latter—something that
could not have existed in that environment prior to the earlier addition.
This is an extension of notions from ecology, biology, and the social sciences. A term for
this phenomenon from the ecology literature, is succession. (See, for example, [Trani].)
Historically succession has been taken to refer to a fairly rigid sequence of communities
of species, generally leading to what is called a climax or (less dramatically) a steady
state.

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Our notion is closer to that of bricolage, a notion that originated with the structuralism
movement of the early 20th century [Wiener] and which is now used in both biology and
the social sciences. Bricolage means the act or result of tinkering, improvising, or build-
ing something out of what is at hand.
In genetics bricolage refers to the evolutionary process as one that tinkers with an exist-
ing genome to produce something new. [Church].
John Seely Brown, former chief scientist for the Xerox Corporation and former director 
of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center captured its sense in a recent talk.
[W]ith bricolage you appropriate something. That means you bring it
into your space, you tinker with it, and you repurpose it and reposi-
tion it. When you repurpose something, it is yours.12
Ciborra [Ciborra] uses bricolage to characterize the way that organizations tailor their in-
formation systems to their changing needs through continual tinkering.
This notion of building one thing upon another applies to our framework in that anything
that persists in an environment changes that environment for everything else. The Internet
provides many interesting illustrations.
• Because the Internet exists at all, access to a very large pool of people is available.
This enabled the development of websites such as eBay.
• The establishment of eBay as a persistent feature of the Internet environment enabled
the development of enterprises whose only sales outlet was eBay. These are enter-
prises with neither brick and mortar nor web storefronts. The only place they sell is
on eBay. This is a nice example of ecological succession.
• At the same time—and again because the Internet provides access to a very large
number of people—other organizations were able to establish what are known as
massively multi-player online games. Each of these games is a simulated world in
which participants interact with the game environment and with each other. In most of
these games, participants seek to acquire virtual game resources, such as magic
swords. Often it takes a fair amount of time, effort, and skill to acquire such re-
sources.
• The existence of all of these factors resulted, though a creative leap, in an eBay mar-
ket in which players sold virtual game assets for real money. This market has become
so large that there are now websites dedicated exclusively to trading in virtual game
assets. [Wallace]
• BBC News reported [BBC] that there are companies that hire low-wage Mexican and
Chinese teenagers to earn virtual assets, which are then sold in these markets. How
long will it be before a full-fledged economy develops around these assets? There
may be brokers and retailers who buy and sell these assets for their own accounts
12
In passing, Brown claims that this is how most new technology develops.
[T]hat is the way we build almost all technology today, even though my lawyers don't want
to hear about it. We borrow things; we tinker with them; we modify them; we join them; we
build stuff.

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even though they do not intend to play the game. (Perhaps they already exist.)
Someone may develop a service that tracks the prices of these assets. Perhaps futures
and options markets will develop along with the inevitable investment advisors.
The point is that once something fits well enough into its environment to persist it adds it-
self to the environment for everything else. This creates additional possibilities and a
world with ever increasing complexity.
In each of the examples mentioned above, one can identify what we have been calling an
autonomous entity. In most cases, these entities are self-perpetuating in that the amount
of money they extract from the environment (by selling either products, services, or ad-
vertising) is more than enough to pay for the resources needed to keep it in existence.
In other cases, some Internet entities run on time and effort contributed by volunteers.
But the effect is the same. As long as an entity is self-perpetuating, it becomes part of the
environment and can serve as the basis for the development of additional entities.

4.6 Increasing complexity increasing efficiency, and historical contin-

gency
The phenomenon whereby new entities are built on top of existing entities is now so
widespread and commonplace that it may seem gratuitous even to comment on it. But it
is an important phenomenon, and one that has not received the attention it deserves.
Easy though this phenomenon is to understand once one sees it, it is not trivial. After all,
the second law of thermodynamics tells us that overall entropy increases and complexity
diminishes. Yet we see complexity, both natural and man made, continually increasing.
For the most part, this increasing complexity consists of the development of new
autonomous entities, entities that implement the abstract designs of dissipative structures.
This does not contradict the Second Law. Each autonomous entity maintains its own in-
ternally reduced entropy by using energy imported from the environment to export en-
tropy to the environment. Overall entropy increases. Such a process works only in an en-
vironment that itself receives energy from outside itself. Within such an environment,
complexity increases.
Progress in science and technology and the bountifulness of the marketplace all exempli-
fy this pattern of increasing complexity. One might refer to this kind of pattern as a meta-
epiphenomenon since it is an epiphenomenon of the process that creates epiphenomena.
This creative process also tends to exhibit a second meta-epiphenomenon. Overall energy
utilization becomes continually more efficient. As new autonomous entities find ways to
use previously unused or under-used energy flows (or forms of energy flows that had not
existed until some newly created autonomous entity generated them, perhaps as a waste
product), more of the energy available to the system as a whole is put to use.
The process whereby new autonomous entities come into existence and perpetuate them-
selves is non-reductive. It is creative, contingent, and almost entirely a sequence of his-
torical accidents. As they say, history is just one damn thing after another—to which we
add, and nature is a bricolage. We repeat the observation Anderson made more than three
decades ago.

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The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws [does

not imply] the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the uni-
verse.

4.7 Evolutionary environments

• Access to a supply of externally provided energy and means for exchanging it.
All such environments are what is commonly known as far from equilibrium sys-
tems in that externally supplied energy continually flows through them. The overall
creative process can be summarized as consisting of finding increasingly innovative
ways of using the available energy. To facilitate this process, mechanisms must be
available to support the fungibility of energy—and its proxies such as money,
power, and attention.
• Standards. New products, services, and other items are almost always created
(composed) from existing products, services, and other items. Composition is
greatly facilitated when the elements to be composed adhere to widely accepted
standards.
• Communication and transportation infrastructures. Communication and trans-
portation infrastructures facilitate the exchange/transfer/flow of (a) information
throughout the environment and (b) energy (in one direction) and (c) products and
services (in the other) among trading partners.
• A reasonable level of confidence in the stability and continuity of the products
and services installed in the environment. Mechanisms must be available to allow
agreements to be made and for installed products and services to be relied upon.
• Minimum overhead. Cultural or other mechanisms must exist to discourage cor-
ruption along with enforcement mechanisms to make it harder to siphon off energy
flows for non-productive uses. More generally, the environment must incorporate
mechanisms that minimize the overhead of participating.
• Both (a) centralized but quasi-democratic and transparent governance of the
overall system, its infrastructure, and the standards making process and (b) decent-
ralized overall control (“power to the edge”) in which as much autonomy as pos-
sible is ceded to environment participants.
• Mechanisms that ensure that a certain amount of the available energy is de-
voted to the exploration of the space of new possibilities.
• Mechanisms that allow new products and services to be developed and in-
stalled in the environment and then made known to other participants in the en-
vironment.
• A (primarily, but perhaps not exclusively) bottom-up (i.e., market-like) means
for allocating energy (or its proxies) according to usefulness: the more (less) use-
ful a product or service is found to be (according to actual usage), the more (fewer)
resources it will have at its disposal. All of the participants in the environment must
be self-sustaining in terms of their overall energy transactions. This is possible be-
cause the environment is based on an available external source of “free” energy.

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• An ability to form communities of interest (formal, informal, voluntary, and fee-

based) to facilitate the sharing of information, experience, and expertise. The value
of shared information is typically enhanced when it is shared in groups.
• Both (a) sufficient stability of the overall environment that participants can estab-
lish regularized modes of participation and (b) (generally collaborative) means to
allow the environment to evolve as conditions change.

5 Entities, emergence, and science

5.1 Entities and the sciences
One reason that the sciences at levels higher than physics and chemistry seem somehow
softer than physics and chemistry is that they work with autonomous entities, entities that
for the most part do not supervene over any conveniently compact collection of matter.
Entities in physics and chemistry are satisfyingly solid—or at least they seemed to be be-
fore quantum theory. In contrast, the entities of the higher level sciences are not defined
in terms of material boundaries. These entities don’t exist as stable clumps of matter; it’s
hard to hold them completely in one’s hand—or in the grip of an instrument.
The entities of the special sciences are objectively real—there is some objective measure
(their reduced entropy relative to their environment) by which they qualify as entities.
But as we saw earlier, the processes through which these entities interact and by means of
which they perpetuate themselves are epiphenomenal. Even though the activities of high-
er level entities may be described in terms that are independent of the forces that produce
them (recall that this is our definition of epiphenomenal), the fundamental forces of phys-
ics are the only forces in nature. There is no strong emergence. All other force-like effects
are epiphenomenal.
Consequently we find ourselves in the position of claiming that the higher level sciences
study epiphenomenal interactions among real if often somewhat ethereal entities.
“Of course,” one might argue, “one can build some functionality that is not a logical con-
sequence of its components.” Fodor’s simplest functionalist examples illustrate this phe-
nomenon. The physics underlying the components of a mousetrap won’t tell you that
when you put the components together in a particular way the result will trap a mouse.
The reason why rules of fundamental physics cannot tell you that is because mice simply
are not a part of the ontology of fundamental physics in the same way as Turing Ma-
chines are not part of the ontology of the Game of Life.
If an object is designed to have a function, then if its design works, of course it has that
function—even if, as is likely, that function is logically independent of the laws that gov-
ern the components.
We build objects with particular functions all the time. It’s called ingenuity—or simply
good software or engineering design. Even chimpanzees build and use tools. They use
stems to extract termites from mounds, they use rocks to open nuts, and perhaps even
more interestingly, they “manufacture” sponges by chewing grass roots until they become
an absorbent mass. [Smithsonian] But of course from the perspective of fundamental
physics, stems are not probes; rocks are not hammers; and roots are not sponges.

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To be clear about this point, when we say that the functionality of a designed element is
logically independent of some lower level domain we are not saying that the higher level
functionality is completely unconstrained by the lower level framework. Of course a Tur-
ing Machine emulation is constrained by the rules of the Game of Life, and the function-
ing of a mouse trap is constrained by the laws of physics. But in both cases, other than
those constraints, the functionality of the designed artifact is logically independent of the
laws governing the underlying phenomena. Typically, the functionality of the designed
artifact is expressed in terms that are not even a present in the ontological framework of
the lower level elements.
The question we pose in this subsection (and answer in the next) is whether such logic-
ally independent functionality occurs “in nature” at an intermediate level, at the level of
individual things. Or does this sort of phenomenon occur only in human (or chimpanzee)
artifacts?
Given the current debate (at least in the United States) about evolution, one might take
this as asking whether the existence of a design always implies the existence of a (pre-
sumably intelligent) designer.

6 Some practical considerations

6.1 Emergence and software
As noted earlier, the computation that results when software is executed is emergent. It is
an epiphenomenon of the operation of the (actual or virtual) machine that executes the
software.
Earlier we defined emergence as synonymous with epiphenomenon. At that time we sug-
gested that formalizable epiphenomena are often of significant interest. We also said that
formalization may not always be in the cards. Software, which one would imagine to be a
perfect candidate for formalization, now seems to be a good example of an epiphenomen-
on that is unlikely to be formalized.
It had once been hoped that software development could evolve to a point at which one
need only write down a formal specification of what one wanted the software to do. Then
some automatic process would produce software that satisfied that specification.
That dream now seems quite remote. Besides the difficulty of developing (a) a satisfact-
ory specification language and (b) a system that can translate specifications written in
such a language into executable code, the real problem is that it has turned out to be at
least as difficult and complex to write formal specifications as it is to write the code that
produces the specified results. Even if one could write software by writing specifications,
in many cases—especially cases that involve large and complex systems, the kinds of
cases for which it really matters—doing so doesn’t seem to result in much intellectual
leverage, if indeed it produces any at all.
This illustrates quite nicely that we often find ourselves in the position of wanting to pro-
duce epiphenomena (epiphenomena, which may be very important to us), whose formal-
ization as an abstraction we find to be either infeasible or not particularly useful.

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6.2 Bricolage as design

The process of building one capability on top of another not only drives the overall in-
crease in complexity, it also provides guidance to designers about how to do good design
work. Any good designer—a developer, an architect, a programmer, or an engineer—
knows that it is often best if one can take advantage of forces and processes already in ex-
istence as part of one’s design.
But even before engineering, we as human beings made use of pre-existing capabilities.
Agriculture and animal husbandry use both plant reproduction and such animal capabilit-
ies as locomotion or material (i.e., skin) production for our own purposes. The exploita-
tion of existing capabilities for our own purposes is not a new idea.
An interesting example of this approach to engineering involves recent developments in
robotics. Collins reported [Collins] that a good way to make a robot walk is by exploiting
gravity through what he called passive-dynamic motion—raise the robot’s leg and let
gravity pull it back down—rather than by directing the robot’s limbs to follow a pre-
defined trajectory.
This illustrates in a very concrete way the use of an existing force in a design. Instead of
building a robot whose every motion was explicitly programmed, Collins built a robot
whose motions were controlled in part by gravity, a pre-existing force.

6.3 Infrastructure-centric development

Building new capabilities on top of existing ones is not only good design, it is highly
leveraged design. But now that we are aware of this strategy a further lesson can be
drawn. New systems should be explicitly designed to serve as a possible basis for sys-
tems yet to come. Another way of putting this is that every time we build a new system, it
should be built so that it becomes part of our environment, i.e., our infrastructure, and not
just a piece of closed and isolated functionality.
By infrastructure we mean systems such as the Internet, the telephone system, the electric
power distribution system, etc. Each of these systems can be characterized in isolation in
terms of the particular functions they perform. But more important than the functional
characterization of any of these individual systems is the fact that they exist in the envir-
onment in such a way that other systems can use them as services.
We should apply this perspective to all new systems that we design: design them as infra-
structure services and not just as bits of functionality. Clearly Microsoft understands this.
Not only does it position the systems it sells as infrastructure services, it also maintains
tight ownership and control over them. When such systems become widely used elements
of the economy, the company makes a lot of money. The tight control it maintains and the
selfishness with which it controls these systems earns it lots of resentment as well. Soci-
ety can’t prosper when any important element of its infrastructure is controlled primarily
for selfish purposes.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) is currently reinventing itself [Dick] to be more
infrastructure-centric. This requires it to transform what is now a
huge collection of independent “stovepipe” information systems,
each supporting only its original procurement specification, to a uni-
fied assembly of interoperating systems.

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The evocative term stovepipe is intended to distinguish the existing situation—in which
the DoD finds that it has acquired and deployed a large number of functionally isolated
systems (the “stovepipes”)—from the more desirable situation in which all DoD systems
are available to each other as an infrastructure of services.

6.4 Service refactoring and the age of services

The process whereby infrastructure services build on other infrastructure services leads
not only to new services, it also leads to service refactoring. The corporate trend toward
outsourcing functions that are not considered part of the core competence of the corpora-
tion illustrates this. Payroll processing is a typical example.
Because many organizations have employees who must be paid, these organizations must
provide a payroll service for themselves. It has now become feasible to factor out that
service and offer it as part of our economic infrastructure.
This outsourcing of internal processes leads to economic efficiencies in that many such
processes can be done more efficiently when performed by specialized organizations.
Such specialized organizations can take advantage of economies of scale. They can also
serve as focal points where expertise in their specialized service can be concentrated and
the means of providing those services improved.
As this process establishes itself ever more firmly, more and more organizations will fo-
cus more on offering services rather than functions, and organizations will become less
stovepiped.
We frequently speak of the “service industries.” For the most part this term has been used
to refer to low level services—although even the fast food industry can be seen as the
“outsourcing” of the personal food preparation function. With our more general notion of
service in mind, historians may look back to this period as the beginning of the age of
services.
Recall that a successful service is an autonomous entity. It persists as long as it is able to
extract from its environment enough resources, typically money, to perpetuate itself.

6.5 A possible undesirable unintended consequence

The sort of service refactoring we just discussed tends to make the overall economic sys-
tem more efficient. It also tends to improve reliability: the payroll service organizations
are more reliable than the average corporate payroll department.
On the other hand, by eliminating redundancy, efficiency makes the overall economic
system more vulnerable to large scale failure. If a payroll service organization has a fail-
ure, it is likely to have a larger impact than the failure of any one corporate payroll de-
partment. This phenomenon seems to be quite common—tending to transform failure
statistics from a Gaussian to a scale free distribution: the tails are longer and fatter. [Col-
baugh] Failures may be less frequent, but when they occur they may be more global.
This may be yet another unintended and unexpected emergent phenomenon—a modern
example of the tragedy of the commons. Increased economic efficiency leads to increased
vulnerability to major disasters at the societal-level.

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On the other hand, perhaps our growing realization that catastrophic failures may occur
along with our ability to factor out commonly needed services will help us solve this
problem as well. We now see increasing number of disaster planning services being
offered.

7 Observations
Our fundamental existence depends on taking energy and other resources from the envir-
onment. We must all do it to stay in existence. Raises fundamental ethical questions: how
can taking be condemned? Supports stewardship notions since we are all dependent on
environment.
Dynamic entities are composed of static and dynamic entities (bodies and societies).
That’s what makes them solid. But those static entity components are frequently replaced.
Competition for energy and other resources justifies picture of evolution as survival of
the meanest. Also justifies group selection since groups can ensure access to resources
better than individuals.

8 Concluding remarks
For most of its history, science has pursued the goal of explaining existing phenomena in
terms of simpler phenomena. That’s the reductionist agenda.
The approach we have taken is to ask how new phenomena may be constructed from and
implemented in terms of existing phenomena. That’s the creative impulse of artists, com-
puter scientists, engineers—and of nature. It is these new phenomena that are often
thought of as emergent.
When thinking in the constructive direction, a question arises that is often under-appreci-
ated: what allows one to put existing things together to get something new—and
something new that will persist in the world? What binding forces and binding strategies
do we (and nature) have at our disposal?
Our answer has been that there are two sorts of binding strategies: energy wells and en-
ergy-consuming processes. Energy wells are reasonably well understood—although it is
astonishing how many different epiphenomena nature and technology have produced
through the use of energy wells.
We have not even begun to catalog the ways in which energy-consuming processes may
be used to construct stable, self-perpetuating, autonomous entities.
Earlier we wrote that science does not consider it within its realm to ask constructivist
questions. That is not completely true. Science asks about how we got here from the big
bang, and science asks about biological evolution. These are both constructivist ques-
tions. Since science is an attempt to understand nature, and since constructive processes
occur in nature, it is quite consistent with the overall goals of science to ask how these
constructive processes work. As far as we can determine, there is no sub-discipline of sci-
ence that asks, in general, how the new arises from the existing.
Science has produced some specialized answers to this question. The biological evolu-
tionary explanation involves random mutation and crossover of design records. The cos-
mological explanation involves falling into energy wells of various sorts. Is there any

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more to say about how nature finds and then explores new possibilities? If as Dennett ar-
gues in [Dennett ‘96] this process may be fully explicated as generalized Darwinian evo-
lution, questions still remain. Is there any useful way to characterize the search space that
nature is exploring? What search strategies does nature use to explore that space? Clearly
one strategy is human inventiveness.

9 Acknowledgement
We are grateful for numerous enjoyable and insightful discussions with Debora Shuger
during which many of the ideas in this paper were developed and refined.

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Figures and Tables

Table 1. Dissipative structures vs. self-perpetuating entities

Dissipative structures Self-perpetuating entities

Pure epiphenomena, e.g., 2-chamber example. Has functional design, e.g., hurricane.
Artificial boundaries. Self-defining boundaries
Imports, stores, and internally distributes
Externally maintained energy gradient.
energy.

Figure 1. Four Rayleigh-Benard convection patterns

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Figure 2. Anatomy of a hurricane. [Image from [NASA].]

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