Is Anything Ever New? Considering Emergence

James P. Crutchfield
Physics Department
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720, USA

ABSTRACT: This brief essay reviews an approach to defining and then detecting the emergence of complexity in nonlinear processes. It is, in fact, a synopsis of The Calculi of Emergence that leaves out the technical details in an attempt to clarify the motivations behind the approach.

The central puzzle addressed is how we as scientists -- or, for that matter, how adaptive agents evolving in populations -- ever "discover" anything new in our worlds, when it appears that all we can describe is expressed in the language of our current understanding. One resolution -- hierarchical machine reconstruction -- is proposed. Along the way, complexity metrics for detecting structure and quantifying emergence, along with an analysis of the constraints on the dynamics of innovation, are outlined. The approach turns on a synthesis of tools from dynamical systems, computation, and inductive inference.


J. P. Crutchfield, "Is Anything Ever New? Considering Emergence", in Complexity: Metaphors, Models, and Reality, G. Cowan, D. Pines, and D. Melzner, editors, SFI Series in the Sciences of Complexity XIX, Addison-Wesley, Redwood City (1994) 479-497. [ps.gz]= 112kb [ps]= 331kb [pdf]= 271kb
Santa Fe Institute Working Paper 94-03-011.

NOTE: Based on a talk given at the Santa Fe Institute Integrative Themes Workshop, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 8-15 July 1992.