 In past videos in this series, we've talked about emergence as a process within a system that creates new levels of organization, where we get synergies between the parts that adds value and creates a new pattern of organization, leading to a hierarchical structure called integrative levels and a complex dynamic between the micro and macro levels. In this module though, we'll be talking about emergence as it plays out over time within some process. An emergent process is a process of change that involves non-linear, abrupt phase transitions as the system's overall structure and function is transformed into new regimes of behavior exhibiting new properties that could not have been predicted to arise prior to the transformation. Emergent processes may be contrasted to linear developments of change. With linear systems, the overall behavior of the system is a direct consequence of the interaction between the parts at all times. The macro level features and behavior can be directly computed from the micro level elementary parts. Changes in the micro level create corresponding changes in the macro level. For example, micro level changes in the mechanical parts to a car create the macro level changes in its position. Any future or past states to the system can be understood as some combination of changes within the elementary components. We can, for example, predict far out into the future the occurrence of eclipses because the future state of our solar system is governed by the changes of its elementary parts. We can predict into the future where the planets will be and this will be similar in quality to previously experienced states in the past. That is to say, nothing qualitatively different would occur. Many of our modeling techniques are based upon this assumption of an absence of emergence, with the whole process of change being the sum of its micro interactions. For example, within economics, dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models attempt to explain aggregate economic phenomena such as economic growth, business cycles and the effects of monetary policy as derived from microeconomic phenomena. The systems equally show proportionality between input and output, meaning that change typically happens in an incremental fashion. Emergent processes are fundamentally different from these linear processes of change. Systems that involve emergence, that is to say, two different levels of organization may undergo changes on both different levels, where changes in the macro level are not directly correlated to changes on the micro level. The macro level undergoes its own processes of change that have their own internal structure, whereas with simpler systems, the macro level states are directly correlated to the micro level. With emergence, the macro level states may become disassociated from the micro level to a greater or lesser extent. For example, ecosystems, societies and economies go through macro level processes of change such as succession and industrialization that have their own internal dynamics on the macro level. Often, all the parts have to move together into a new macro level regime and this places a downward course on the parts. New macro level regimes within the system emerge when the system converges upon a new set of rules or protocols that drive all of the parts to adopt that new macro pattern. For example, now that we've converged upon digital as the basic format for information encoding, there are strong positive externalities for everyone to use digital as analog becomes increasingly less compatible. Thus we get a rapid change from analog to digital and a macro level regime shift. This shift can happen very fast because of positive externalities, creating positive feedback that drives rapid change across the system. In this way, new macro regimes can rapidly emerge within whole economies, societies or technology infrastructure shifting to a new pattern of organization that would have been difficult to predict beforehand. This period of major rapid macro level change may be called a phase transition. A phase transition is an emergent process of change between different overall states of organization in a system. These transitions may be understood as rapid, abrupt transformations in the overall macro state to the system that is triggered by some small change within an input variable. Thus whereas with linear change, the macro level changes somewhat proportionately in accordance with the changes in the input values. With emergent processes, this is not so. During this process development, there are critical stages either side of which its macro structure takes a very different overall makeup given only a small change in the controlling variables. The simplest example of this is the different phases that water takes as it goes from gas to liquid to solid ice. In the case of the transition from liquid to steam, as temperature increases, this transition happens abruptly when the system approaches the critical value of 100 degrees centigrade. In phase transitions, such as the spontaneous magnetization in ferromagnetism, relations of long range order emerge in a system under special conditions. Unlike linear changes, which are largely accountable by statistical averages over the micro properties, these phase transitions are the results of the parts working synergistically in a synchronized fashion, where unique properties emerge for the whole system that are not such simple averages. The nature of the phase of the system cannot be related to the microscopic nature of the basic elements composing the system. Thus, phase transition processes typically do not require that we understand the micro mechanisms upon which they rest. It is sufficed to take the system as a whole, and from this we can infer the general phase transition behavior as a similar macro level dynamic to that which occurs in all emergent processes. As such, system properties do not require derivation from micro level dynamics that can be said to be emergent. When a system undergoes a phase transition, its micro components get rapidly reconfigured into a qualitatively different macro structure. However, the properties of the components themselves remain relatively unchanged. Prior and post-macro states correspond to roughly the same configuration of micro states, that is to say phase transitions involve a restructuring of the system on the macro level with only a limited change in the properties of the parts and other local conditions. This emergent process that engenders phase transitions can be seen in a wide range of systems including physical, biological and social systems. One example of this might be the outbreak of ethnic violence. The phenomenon of ethnic violence can be seen as a phase transition from a mixed but non-aggressive population of individuals to occasional, abrupt outbursts of widespread conflict. The underlying level of racism and hostility within the members of a society may remain relatively similar before widespread violence outbreaks and when the system flips into a violent outbreak. Thus it is not that the members have necessarily become more racist and hostile. It is instead that the system was near a phase transition and a small event triggered it to flip from one macro regime to another while the components parts properties changed only slightly. Because emergent, phase transitions are discontinuous, meaning they go from one overall state to another with limited overlap between them. They thus involve critical points of change. These critical points are discrete changes on the macro level. Importantly, critical points occur due to the system having mutually exclusive macro level regimes. Thus instead of one regime gradually giving way to another, which would be a continuous change without critical points. What actually happens though when the regimes are mutually exclusive is a discreet and rapid flipping from one into the other and this is the critical point. We can see this in the change in a dictatorial political regime. Because they are autocratic, meaning there can only be one stable macro level regime at any given time, a change between regimes has to involve a critical phase transition point. Which is often what we see empirically as typically when a regime falls there is positive feedback driving a rapid move towards a new political regime, a new macro level stability. Recent processes of change create qualitatively new systems. Whereas with linear processes of change, the change is within the properties of the parts which can be quantified. However, macro level regime shifts change the structure and functioning of the whole which results in qualitatively new behavior and features. For example, this can be seen in learning some new practical skill. When one starts learning or practicing something new, one accumulates isolated rules. Do it like this, if that happens do this, don't forget to etc. These are incremental quantitative changes to behavior because one is essentially just gathering a list of instructions and working through them in an iterative fashion. However, at some point, if successful, these isolated rules will start to become coherent as they coalesce into a new way of acting. At this point one will start seeing them as integrated into some overarching framework. One begins to act from within that framework rather than merely executing on isolated rules. This is a qualitative change as it induces new emergent macro level behavior and functionality within the whole system.