Newsflash: Time May Not Exist | Einstein. Les propriétés de l’eau redécouvertes grâce à des simulations utilisant la physique quantique - {SpectroSciences} The physics of the Web (July 2001) - Physics World - PhysicsWeb. Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science | Online - Table of Contents. Emergent Properties. First published Tue Sep 24, 2002; substantive revision Tue Feb 28, 2012 Emergence is a notorious philosophical term of art. A variety of theorists have appropriated it for their purposes ever since George Henry Lewes gave it a philosophical sense in his 1875 Problems of Life and Mind.
We might roughly characterize the shared meaning thus: emergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them. (For example, it is sometimes said that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.) Each of the quoted terms is slippery in its own right, and their specifications yield the varied notions of emergence that we discuss below. 1. British emergentists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries may not have been the first to embrace emergentist ideas (Caston 1997 provides evidence that Galen was an emergentist), but they were certainly the first to work out a comprehensive emergentist picture. Emergence : article (Bickhard & Campbell) Emergence Mark H. Bickhard with Donald T. Campbell* Mark H. Donald T. Deepest thanks are due to Wayne Christensen, John Collier, Norm Melchert, and, most especially, Cliff Hooker, for comments on earlier drafts, and to the Henry R.
. * This paper was to have been written jointly with Don Campbell. Mark H. Abstract Accounting for emergence has proven to be extraordinarily difficult, so much so that whether or not genuine emergence exists seems still in doubt. Consider a kitchen table. This is epiphenomenality in the sense of an appearance being false about underlying reality, such as the apparent motion of objects when watching a movie, when all that is "really" happening is a rapid succession of still pictures that happen to be sufficiently similar to each other to give an impression, a strictly false impression, of objects and people and caused motion.
Most of us would prefer that our experiences of tables not be false, not be merely epiphenomenal. Emergence presupposes a notion of levels. Ecosystem Change : Summary of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Home » Ecosystem Change » Level 1 Context - Human well-being is highly dependent on ecosystems and the benefits they provide such as food and drinkable water. Over the past 50 years, however, humans have had a tremendous impact on their environment. To better understand the consequences of current changes to ecosystems and to evaluate scenarios for the future, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has launched a comprehensive scientific study, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. What actions could be taken to limit harmful consequences of ecosystem degradation?
Latest update: 15 March 2005 1. 1.1 Virtually all of Earth’s ecosystems have been significantly transformed through human actions. 1.2 Ecosystems depend on fundamental environmental cycles such as the continuous circulation of water, carbon, and other nutrients. 1.3 Many animal and plant populations have declined in numbers, geographical spread, or both. 2. 2.2 uman use of all ecosystem services is increasing: More... 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. StarLogo on the Web.