Snowflakes forming complex symmetrical patterns is an example of emergence in a physical system.

A termite "cathedral" mound produced by a termite colony: a classic example of emergence in nature

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems.

Definitions[link]

The concept has been in use since at least the time of Aristotle.^[1] John Stuart Mill^[2] and Julian Huxley^[3] are just some of the historical luminaries who have written on the concept.

The term "emergent" was coined by the pioneer psychologist G. H. Lewes, who wrote:

Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same -- their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference. (Lewes 1875, p. 412) (Blitz 1992)

Jeffrey Goldstein in the School of Business at Adelphi University provides a current definition of emergence in the journal, Emergence (Goldstein 1999). Goldstein initially defined emergence as: "the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems".

Goldstein's definition can be further elaborated to describe the qualities of this definition in more detail:

The common characteristics are: (1) radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems); (2) coherence or correlation (meaning integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time); (3) A global or macro "level" (i.e. there is some property of "wholeness"); (4) it is the product of a dynamical process (it evolves); and (5) it is "ostensive" (it can be perceived). For good measure, Goldstein throws in supervenience -- downward causation. (Corning 2002)

Corning's definition of emergence:

Rules, or laws, have no causal efficacy; they do not in fact “generate” anything. They serve merely to describe regularities and consistent relationships in nature. These patterns may be very illuminating and important, but the underlying causal agencies must be separately specified (though often they are not). But that aside, the game of chess illustrates precisely why any laws or rules of emergence and evolution are insufficient. Even in a chess game, you cannot use the rules to predict “history” — i.e., the course of any given game. Indeed, you cannot even reliably predict the next move in a chess game. Why? Because the “system” involves more than the rules of the game. It also includes the players and their unfolding, moment-by-moment decisions among a very large number of available options at each choice point. The game of chess is inescapably historical, even though it is also constrained and shaped by a set of rules, not to mention the laws of physics. Moreover, and this is a key point, the game of chess is also shaped by teleonomic, cybernetic, feedback-driven influences. It is not simply a self-ordered process; it involves an organized, “purposeful” activity. (Corning 2002)

Strong and weak emergence[link]

It has been suggested that Strong emergence be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2009.

The usage of the notion "emergence" may generally be subdivided into two perspectives, that of "weak emergence" and "strong emergence". Weak emergence describes new properties arising in systems as a result of the interactions at an elemental level. Emergence, in this case, is merely part of the language, or model that is needed to describe a system's behaviour.

But if, on the other hand, systems can have qualities not directly traceable to the system's components, but rather to how those components interact, and one is willing to accept that a system supervenes on its components, then it is difficult to account for an emergent property's cause. These new qualities are irreducible to the system's constituent parts (Laughlin 2005). The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This view of emergence is called strong emergence. Some fields in which strong emergence is more widely used include etiology, epistemology and ontology.

Regarding strong emergence, Mark A. Bedau observes:

"Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing."(Bedau 1997)

However, "the debate about whether or not the whole can be predicted from the properties of the parts misses the point. Wholes produce unique combined effects, but many of these effects may be co-determined by the context and the interactions between the whole and its environment(s)." (Corning 2002) Along that same thought, Arthur Koestler stated, "it is the synergistic effects produced by wholes that are the very cause of the evolution of complexity in nature" and used the metaphor of Janus to illustrate how the two perspectives (strong or holistic vs. weak or reductionistic) should be treated as perspectives, not exclusives, and should work together to address the issues of emergence.(Koestler 1969) Further,

"The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts."(Anderson 1972)

Objective or subjective quality[link]

The properties of complexity and organization of any system are considered by Crutchfield to be subjective qualities determined by the observer.

"Defining structure and detecting the emergence of complexity in nature are inherently subjective, though essential, scientific activities. Despite the difficulties, these problems can be analysed in terms of how model-building observers infer from measurements the computational capabilities embedded in non-linear processes. An observer’s notion of what is ordered, what is random, and what is complex in its environment depends directly on its computational resources: the amount of raw measurement data, of memory, and of time available for estimation and inference. The discovery of structure in an environment depends more critically and subtly, though, on how those resources are organized. The descriptive power of the observer’s chosen (or implicit) computational model class, for example, can be an overwhelming determinant in finding regularity in data."(Crutchfield 1994)

On the other hand, Peter Corning argues "Must the synergies be perceived/observed in order to qualify as emergent effects, as some theorists claim? Most emphatically not. The synergies associated with emergence are real and measurable, even if nobody is there to observe them." (Corning 2002) These are not necessarily incompatible, however, since while an observer is free to choose the definition of order that they wish to take, once it is chosen that definition applies objectively to any system independently of observation.^{[citation needed]}

Emergence in philosophy, religion, art and human sciences[link]

In philosophy, emergence is often understood to be a much stronger claim about the etiology of a system's properties. An emergent property of a system, in this context, is one that is not a property of any component of that system, but is still a feature of the system as a whole. Nicolai Hartmann, one of the first modern philosophers to write on emergence, termed this categorial novum (new category).

In religion, emergence grounds expressions of religious naturalism in which a sense of the sacred is perceived in the workings of entirely naturalistic processes by which more complex forms arise or evolve from simpler forms. Examples are detailed in a 2006 essay titled 'The Sacred Emergence of Nature' by Ursula Goodenough and Terrence Deacon and a 2006 essay titled 'Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred' by Stuart Kauffman.

In art, emergence is used to explore the origins of novelty, creativity, and authorship. Some art/literary theorists (Wheeler, 2006;^[4] Alexander, 2011^[5]) have proposed alternatives to postmodern understandings of "authorship" using the complexity sciences and emergence theory. They contend that artistic selfhood and meaning are emergent, relatively objective phenomena. The concept of emergence has also been applied to the theory of literature and art, history, linguistics, cognitive sciences, etc. by the teachings of Jean-Marie Grassin et the University of Limoges (v. esp.: J. Fontanille, B. Westphal, J. Vion-Dury, éds. L'Émergence—Poétique de l'Émergence, en réponse aux travaux de Jean-Marie Grassin, Bern, Berlin, etc., 2011; and: the article "Emergence" in the International Dictionary of Literary Terms (DITL).

In postcolonial studies, the term "Emerging Literature" refers to a contemporary body of texts that gaining momentum in the global literary landscape (v. esp.: J.M. Grassin, ed. Emerging Literatures, Bern, Berlin, etc. : Peter Lang, 1996). By opposition, "emergent literature" is rather a concept used in the theory of literature.

Emergent properties and processes[link]

An emergent behavior or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective. If emergence happens over disparate size scales, then the reason is usually a causal relation across different scales. In other words there is often a form of top-down feedback in systems with emergent properties.^[6] The processes from which emergent properties result may occur in either the observed or observing system, and can commonly be identified by their patterns of accumulating change, most generally called 'growth'. Why emergent behaviours occur include: intricate causal relations across different scales and feedback, known as interconnectivity. The emergent property itself may be either very predictable or unpredictable and unprecedented, and represent a new level of the system's evolution. The complex behaviour or properties are not a property of any single such entity, nor can they easily be predicted or deduced from behaviour in the lower-level entities: they are irreducible. The shape and behaviour of a flock of birds [1] or school of fish are also good examples.

One reason why emergent behaviour is hard to predict is that the number of interactions between components of a system increases combinatorially with the number of components, thus potentially allowing for many new and subtle types of behaviour to emerge. For example, the possible interactions between groups of molecules grows enormously with the number of molecules such that it is impossible for a computer to even list the arrangements for a system as small as 20 molecules.^{[citation needed]}

On the other hand, merely having a large number of interactions is not enough by itself to guarantee emergent behaviour; many of the interactions may be negligible or irrelevant, or may cancel each other out. In some cases, a large number of interactions can in fact work against the emergence of interesting behaviour, by creating a lot of "noise" to drown out any emerging "signal"; the emergent behaviour may need to be temporarily isolated from other interactions before it reaches enough critical mass to be self-supporting. Thus it is not just the sheer number of connections between components which encourages emergence; it is also how these connections are organised. A hierarchical organisation is one example that can generate emergent behaviour (a bureaucracy may behave in a way quite different from that of the individual humans in that bureaucracy); but perhaps more interestingly, emergent behaviour can also arise from more decentralized organisational structures, such as a marketplace. In some cases, the system has to reach a combined threshold of diversity, organisation, and connectivity before emergent behaviour appears.

Unintended consequences and side effects are closely related to emergent properties. Luc Steels writes: "A component has a particular functionality but this is not recognizable as a subfunction of the global functionality. Instead a component implements a behaviour whose side effect contributes to the global functionality [...] Each behaviour has a side effect and the sum of the side effects gives the desired functionality" (Steels 1990). In other words, the global or macroscopic functionality of a system with "emergent functionality" is the sum of all "side effects", of all emergent properties and functionalities.

Systems with emergent properties or emergent structures may appear to defy entropic principles and the second law of thermodynamics, because they form and increase order despite the lack of command and central control. This is possible because open systems can extract information and order out of the environment.

Emergence helps to explain why the fallacy of division is a fallacy.

Emergent structures in nature[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2008)

Ripple patterns in a sand dune created by wind or water is an example of an emergent structure in nature.

Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland is an example of a complex emergent structure created by natural processes

Emergent structures are patterns that cannot result from a small set of rules or events; however, there are those who disagree.^[7] Rules are not causal commands natural systems obey. Rather, the interaction of each part with its immediate surroundings causes a complex chain of processes leading to order in some form. One might conclude, per Aristotle,^[1] that emergent structures are more than the sum of their parts because the emergent order will not arise if the various parts are simply coexisting; the interaction of these parts is central. Emergent structures can be found in many natural phenomena, from the physical to the biological domain. For example, the shape of weather phenomena such as hurricanes are emergent structures. The development and growth of complex, orderly crystals, as driven by the random motion of water molecules within a conducive natural environment, is another example of an emergent process, where randomness can give rise to complex and deeply attractive, orderly structures.

Water crystals forming on glass demonstrate an emergent natural process occurring under appropriate conditions of temperature and humidity.

However, crystalline structure and hurricanes are said to have a self-organizing phase.

It is useful to distinguish three forms of emergent structures. A first-order emergent structure occurs as a result of shape interactions (for example, hydrogen bonds in water molecules lead to surface tension). A Second-order emergent structure involves shape interactions played out sequentially over time (for example, changing atmospheric conditions as a snowflake falls to the ground build upon and alter its form). Finally, a third-order emergent structure is a consequence of shape, time, and heritable instructions. For example, an organism's genetic code sets boundary conditions on the interaction of biological systems in space and time.

Non-living, physical systems[link]

In physics, emergence is used to describe a property, law, or phenomenon which occurs at macroscopic scales (in space or time) but not at microscopic scales, despite the fact that a macroscopic system can be viewed as a very large ensemble of microscopic systems.

An emergent property need not be more complicated than the underlying non-emergent properties which generate it. For instance, the laws of thermodynamics are remarkably simple, even if the laws which govern the interactions between component particles are complex. The term emergence in physics is thus used not to signify complexity, but rather to distinguish which laws and concepts apply to macroscopic scales, and which ones apply to microscopic scales.

Some examples include:

• Classical mechanics: The laws of classical mechanics can be said to emerge as a limiting case from the rules of quantum mechanics applied to large enough masses. This may be puzzling, because quantum mechanics is generally thought of as more complicated than classical mechanics.
• Friction: Forces between elementary particles are conservative. However, friction emerges when considering more complex structures of matter, whose surfaces can convert mechanical energy into heat energy when rubbed against each other. Similar considerations apply to other emergent concepts in continuum mechanics such as viscosity, elasticity, tensile strength, etc.
• Patterned ground: the distinct, and often symmetrical geometric shapes formed by ground material in periglacial regions.
• Statistical mechanics was initially derived using the concept of a large enough ensemble that fluctuations about the most likely distribution can be all but ignored. However, small clusters do not exhibit sharp first order phase transitions such as melting, and at the boundary it is not possible to completely categorize the cluster as a liquid or solid, since these concepts are (without extra definitions) only applicable to macroscopic systems. Describing a system using statistical mechanics methods is much simpler than using a low-level atomistic approach.
• Weather

Temperature is sometimes used as an example of an emergent macroscopic behaviour. In classical dynamics, a snapshot of the instantaneous momenta of a large number of particles at equilibrium is sufficient to find the average kinetic energy per degree of freedom which is proportional to the temperature. For a small number of particles the instantaneous momenta at a given time are not statistically sufficient to determine the temperature of the system. However, using the ergodic hypothesis, the temperature can still be obtained to arbitrary precision by further averaging the momenta over a long enough time.

Convection in a liquid or gas is another example of emergent macroscopic behaviour that makes sense only when considering differentials of temperature. Convection cells, particularly Bénard cells, are an example of a self-organizing system (more specifically, a dissipative system) whose structure is determined both by the constraints of the system and by random perturbations: the possible realizations of the shape and size of the cells depends on the temperature gradient as well as the nature of the fluid and shape of the container, but which configurations are actually realized is due to random perturbations (thus these systems exhibit a form of symmetry breaking).

In some theories of particle physics, even such basic structures as mass, space, and time are viewed as emergent phenomena, arising from more fundamental concepts such as the Higgs boson or strings. In some interpretations of quantum mechanics, the perception of a deterministic reality, in which all objects have a definite position, momentum, and so forth, is actually an emergent phenomenon, with the true state of matter being described instead by a wavefunction which need not have a single position or momentum. Most of the laws of physics themselves as we experience them today appear to have emerged during the course of time making emergence the most fundamental principle in the universe and raising the question of what might be the most fundamental law of physics from which all others emerged. Chemistry can in turn be viewed as an emergent property of the laws of physics. Biology (including biological evolution) can be viewed as an emergent property of the laws of chemistry. Finally, psychology could at least theoretically be understood as an emergent property of neurobiological laws.

Living, biological systems[link]

Emergence and evolution[link]

Life is a major source of complexity, and evolution is the major process behind the varying forms of life. In this view, evolution is the process describing the growth of complexity in the natural world and in speaking of the emergence of complex living beings and life-forms, this view refers therefore to processes of sudden changes in evolution.

Regarding causality in evolution Peter Corning observes:

"Synergistic effects of various kinds have played a major causal role in the evolutionary process generally and in the evolution of cooperation and complexity in particular... Natural selection is often portrayed as a “mechanism”, or is personified as a causal agency... In reality, the differential “selection” of a trait, or an adaptation, is a consequence of the functional effects it produces in relation to the survival and reproductive success of a given organism in a given environment. It is these functional effects that are ultimately responsible for the trans-generational continuities and changes in nature. (Corning 2002)

Per his definition of emergence, Corning also address emergence and evolution:

"[In] evolutionary processes, causation is iterative; effects are also causes. And this is equally true of the synergistic effects produced by emergent systems. In other words, emergence itself... has been the underlying cause of the evolution of emergent phenomena in biological evolution; it is the synergies produced by organized systems that are the key. (Corning 2002)

Swarming is a well-known behaviour in many animal species from marching locusts to schooling fish to flocking birds. Emergent structures are a common strategy found in many animal groups: colonies of ants, mounds built by termites, swarms of bees, shoals/schools of fish, flocks of birds, and herds/packs of mammals.

An example to consider in detail is an ant colony. The queen does not give direct orders and does not tell the ants what to do. Instead, each ant reacts to stimuli in the form of chemical scent from larvae, other ants, intruders, food and build up of waste, and leaves behind a chemical trail, which, in turn, provides a stimulus to other ants. Here each ant is an autonomous unit that reacts depending only on its local environment and the genetically encoded rules for its variety of ant. Despite the lack of centralized decision making, ant colonies exhibit complex behavior and have even been able to demonstrate the ability to solve geometric problems. For example, colonies routinely find the maximum distance from all colony entrances to dispose of dead bodies.^{[citation needed]}

Organization of life[link]

A broader example of emergent properties in biology is viewed in the biological organisation of life, ranging from the subatomic level to the entire biosphere. For example, individual atoms can be combined to form molecules such as polypeptide chains, which in turn fold and refold to form proteins, which in turn create even more complex structures. These proteins, assuming their functional status from their spatial conformation, interact together and with other molecules to achieve higher biological functions and eventually create an organism. Another example is how cascade phenotype reactions, as detailed in chaos theory, arise from individual genes mutating respective positioning.^[8] At the highest level, all the biological communities in the world form the biosphere, where its human participants form societies, and the complex interactions of meta-social systems such as the stock market.

Emergence in humanity[link]

Spontaneous order[link]

Groups of human beings, left free to each regulate themselves, tend to produce spontaneous order, rather than the meaningless chaos often feared. This has been observed in society at least since Chuang Tzu in ancient China. A classic traffic roundabout is a good example, with cars moving in and out with such effective organization that some modern cities have begun replacing stoplights at problem intersections with traffic circles [2], and getting better results.

Emergent processes or behaviours can be seen in many places, such as traffic patterns, cities, political systems of governance, cabal and market-dominant minority phenomena in politics and economics, organizational phenomena in computer simulations and cellular automata. Whenever you have a multitude of individuals interacting with one another, there often comes a moment when disorder gives way to order and something new emerges: a pattern, a decision, a structure, or a change in direction (Miller 2010, 29).^[9]

Economics[link]

The stock market (or any market for that matter) is an example of emergence on a grand scale. As a whole it precisely regulates the relative security prices of companies across the world, yet it has no leader; there is no one entity which controls the workings of the entire market. Agents, or investors, have knowledge of only a limited number of companies within their portfolio, and must follow the regulatory rules of the market and analyse the transactions individually or in large groupings. Trends and patterns emerge which are studied intensively by technical analysts.^{[citation needed]}

Money[link]

Money, insofar as being a medium of exchange and of deferred payment, is also an example of an emergent phenomenon between market participators. In their strive to possess a commodity with greater marketability than their own commodity, such that the possession of these more marketable commodities (money) facilitate the search for commodities that participators want (e.g. consumables).

"As each economizing individual becomes increasingly more aware of his economic interest, he is led by this interest, without any agreement, without legislative compulsion, and even without regard to the public interest, to give his commodities in exchange for other, more saleable, commodities, even if he does not need them for any immediate consumption purpose. With economic progress, therefore, we can everywhere observe the phenomenon of a certain number of goods, especially those that are most easily saleable at a given time and place, becoming, under the powerful influence of custom, acceptable to everyone in trade, and thus capable of being given in exchange for any other commodity."^[10]

World Wide Web and the Internet[link]

The World Wide Web is a popular example of a decentralized system exhibiting emergent properties. There is no central organization rationing the number of links, yet the number of links pointing to each page follows a power law in which a few pages are linked to many times and most pages are seldom linked to. A related property of the network of links in the World Wide Web is that almost any pair of pages can be connected to each other through a relatively short chain of links. Although relatively well known now, this property was initially unexpected in an unregulated network. It is shared with many other types of networks called small-world networks.(Barabasi, Jeong, & Albert 1999, pp. 130–131)

Internet traffic can also exhibit some seemingly emergent properties. In the congestion control mechanism, TCP flows can become globally synchronized at bottlenecks, simultaneously increasing and then decreasing throughput in coordination. Congestion, widely regarded as a nuisance, is possibly an emergent property of the spreading of bottlenecks across a network in high traffic flows which can be considered as a phase transition (see review of related research in (Smith 2008, pp. 1–31)).

Another important example of emergence in web-based systems is social bookmarking (also called collaborative tagging). In social bookmarking systems, users assign tags to resources shared with other users, which gives rise to a type of information organisation that emerges from this crowdsourcing process. Recent research which analyzes empirically the complex dynamics of such systems^[11] has shown that consensus on stable distributions and a simple form of shared vocabularies does indeed emerge, even in the absence of a central controlled vocabulary. Some believe that this could be because users who contribute tags all use the same language, and they share similar semantic structures underlying the choice of words. The convergence in social tags may therefore be interpreted as the emergence of structures as people who have similar semantic interpretation collaboratively index online information, a process called semantic imitation.^{[12] [13]}

Architecture and cities[link]

Bangkok can be seen as an example of spontaneous order

Emergent structures appear at many different levels of organization or as spontaneous order. Emergent self-organization appears frequently in cities where no planning or zoning entity predetermines the layout of the city. (Krugman 1996, pp. 9–29) The interdisciplinary study of emergent behaviors is not generally considered a homogeneous field, but divided across its application or problem domains.

Architects and Landscape Architects may not design all the pathways of a complex of buildings. Instead they might let usage patterns emerge and then place pavement where pathways have become worn in.^{[citation needed]}

The on-course action and vehicle progression of the 2007 Urban Challenge could possibly be regarded as an example of cybernetic emergence. Patterns of road use, indeterministic obstacle clearance times, etc. will work together to form a complex emergent pattern that can not be deterministically planned in advance.

Architecture firms that work specifically with the concept of Emergence as it relates to the built environment include Emergent Architecture, founded by Tom Wiscombe in 1999. The architectural school of Christopher Alexander takes a deeper approach to emergence attempting to rewrite the process of urban growth itself in order to affect form, establishing a new methodology of planning and design tied to traditional practices, an Emergent Urbanism. Urban emergence has also been linked to theories of urban complexity (Batty 2005) and urban evolution (Marshall 2009).

Building ecology is a conceptual framework for understanding architecture and the built environment as the interface between the dynamically-interdependent elements of buildings, their occupants, and the larger environment. Rather than viewing buildings as inanimate or static objects, building ecologist Hal Levin views them as interfaces or intersecting domains of living and non-living systems.^[14] The microbial ecology of the indoor environment is strongly dependent on the building materials, occupants, contents, environmental context and the indoor and outdoor climate. The strong relationship between atmospheric chemistry and indoor air quality and the chemical reactions occurring indoors. The chemicals may be nutrients, neutral or biocides for the microbial organisms. The microbes produce chemicals that affect the building materials and occupant health and well being. Humans manipulate the temperature and humidity to achieve comfort with the concomitant effects on the microbes that populate and evolve.^[14][15][16]

Eric Bonabeau's attempt to define emergent phenomena is through traffic: "traffic jams are actually very complicated and mysterious. On an individual level, each driver is trying to get somewhere and is following (or breaking) certain rules, some legal (the speed limit) and others societal or personal (slow down to let another driver change into your lane). But a traffic jam is a separate and distinct entity that emerges from those individual behaviors. Gridlock on a highway, for example, can travel backward for no apparent reason, even as the cars are moving forward." He has also likened emergent phenomena to the analysis of market trends and employee behavior.^[17]

Computer AI[link]

Some artificially intelligent computer applications utilize emergent behavior for animation. One example is Boids, which mimics the swarming behavior of birds.

Language[link]

It has been argued that language, or at least language change, is an emergence phenomenon. While each speaker merely tries to reach her or his own communicative goals, she or he uses language in a particular way. If enough speakers behave in that way, language is changed (Keller 1994). In a wider sense, the norms of a language, i.e. the linguistic conventions of its speech society, can be seen as a system emerging from long-time participation in communicative problem-solving in various social circumstances. (Määttä 2000)

Emergent change processes[link]

Within the field of group facilitation and organization development, there have been a number of new group processes that are designed to maximize emergence and self-organization, by offering a minimal set of effective initial conditions. Examples of these processes include Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, the World Cafe or Knowledge Cafe, Open Space Technology, and others. (Holman, 2010)

Emergence in political philosophy[link]

Economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek wrote about emergence in the context of law, politics, and markets. His theories (Hayek 1973, p. 37) set out the difference between cosmos or "grown order" (that is, emergence), and taxis or "made order". Hayek dismisses philosophies that do not adequately recognize the emergent nature of society, and which describe it as the conscious creation of a rational agent (be it God, the Sovereign, or any kind of personified body politic, such as Hobbes's Leviathan). The most important social structures, including the laws ("nomos") governing the relations between individual persons, are emergent, according to Hayek. While the idea of laws and markets as emergent phenomena comes fairly naturally to an economist, and was indeed present in the works of early economists such as Bernard Mandeville, David Hume, and Adam Smith, Hayek traces the development of ideas based on spontaneous-order throughout the history of Western thought, occasionally going as far back as the presocratics. In this, he follows Karl Popper, who blamed the idea of the state as a made order on Plato in The Open Society and its Enemies. Emergentism is a rejection of the state on the grounds that it is a perversion of the emergent rules that societies form spontaneously. Some 19th-century classical liberals, notably Gustave de Molinari and Frédéric Bastiat, were known advocates of an emergent society and wrote about the concepts in detail. See The Production of Security and The Law, respectively.

See also[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Anderson, P.W. (1972), "More is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Nature of the Hierarchical Structure of Science", Science 177 (4047): 393–396, Bibcode 1972Sci...177..393A, DOI:10.1126/science.177.4047.393, PMID 17796623, http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf 
• Barabási, Albert-László; Albert, Réka; Jeong, Hawoong (1999), "The Diameter of the World Wide Web", Nature 401 (6749): 130–131, arXiv:cond-mat/9907038, Bibcode 1999Natur.401..130A, DOI:10.1038/43601 
• Bar-Yam, Yaneer (2004), "A Mathematical Theory of Strong Emergence using Multiscale Variety", Complexity 9 (6): 15–24, DOI:10.1002/cplx.20029, http://necsi.edu/research/multiscale/MultiscaleEmergence.pdf 
• Bateson, Gregory (1972), Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-226-03905-6 
• Batty, Michael (2005), Cities and Complexity, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-52479-1 
• Bedau, Mark A. (1997)."Weak Emergence". http://academic.reed.edu/philosophy/faculty/bedau/pdf/emergence.pdf
• Blitz, David. (1992). Emergent Evolution: Qualitative Novelty and the Levels of Reality. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
• Bunge, Mario Augusto (2003), Emergence and Convergence: Qualitiative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 
• Chalmers, David J. (2002). "Strong and Weak Emergence" http://consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf Republished in P. Clayton and P. Davies, eds. (2006) The Re-Emergence of Emergence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Philip Clayton (2005). Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness Oxford: OUP, ISBN 978-0-19-927252-5
• Philip Clayton & Paul Davies (eds.) (2006). The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Corning, Peter A. (2002), "The Re-Emergence of "Emergence": A Venerable Concept in Search of a Theory", Complexity 7 (6): 18–30, DOI:10.1002/cplx.10043, http://www.complexsystems.org/publications/pdf/emergence3.pdf 
• Crutchfield, James P. (1994), The Calculi of Emergence: Computation, Dynamics, and Induction, "Special issue on the Proceedings of the Oji International Seminar: Complex Systems — from Complex Dynamics to Artificial Reality", Physica D, http://www.santafe.edu/research/publications/workingpapers/94-03-016.pdf 
• Felipe Cucker and Stephen Smale (2007), The Japanese Journal of Mathematics, The Mathematics of Emergence
• Delsemme, Armand (1998), Our Cosmic Origins: From the Big Bang to the Emergence of Life and Intelligence, Cambridge University Press 
• De Wolf, Tom; Holvoet, Tom (2005), "Emergence Versus Self-Organisation: Different Concepts but Promising When Combined", Engineering Self Organising Systems: Methodologies and Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science: 3464, pp. 1–15, http://www.springerlink.com/content/p7k83kc3fkj8e42n/ 
• Fromm, Jochen (2004), The Emergence of Complexity, Kassel University Press, ISBN 3-89958-069-9, http://www.upress.uni-kassel.de/abstracts/3-89958-069-9.html * Fromm, Jochen (2005a), Types and Forms of Emergence, arXiv, arXiv:nlin.AO/0506028 
• Fromm, Jochen (2005b), Ten Questions about Emergence, arXiv, arXiv:nlin.AO/0509049 
• Goodwin, Brian (2001), How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity, Princeton University Press 
• Goldstein, Jeffrey (1999), "Emergence as a Construct: History and Issues", Emergence: Complexity and Organization 1 (1): 49–72, http://www.anecdote.com.au/papers/EmergenceAsAConsutructIssue1_1_3.pdf 
• Haag, James W. (2008). Emergent Freedom: Naturalizing Free Will Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ISBN 978-3-525-56988-7
• Hayek, Friedrich (1973), Law, Legislation and Liberty, ISBN 0-226-32086-3 
• Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979), Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Harvester Press 
• Holland, John H. (1998), Emergence from Chaos to Order, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-7382-0142-1 
• Holman, Peggy. (2010). Engaging Emergence: Turning upheaval into opportunity. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler. ISBN 978-1-60509-521-9
• Hopfield, JJ (1982), "Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 79 (8): 2554–2558, Bibcode 1982PNAS...79.2554H, DOI:10.1073/pnas.79.8.2554, PMC 346238, PMID 6953413 
• Huxley, Julian S.; Huxley, Thomas Henry (1947), Evolution and Ethics: 1893-1943, London, 1947: The Pilot Press, p. 120 
• Johnson, Steven Berlin (2001), Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, Scribner's, ISBN 0-684-86876-8 
• Kauffman, Stuart (1993), The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-507951-5 
• Keller, Rudi (1994), On Language Change: The Invisible Hand in Language, London/New York: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-07671-4 
• Kauffman, Stuart (1995), At Home in the Universe, New York: Oxford University Press 
• Kelly, Kevin (1994), Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, Perseus Books, ISBN 0-201-48340-8 
• Koestler, Arthur (1969), A. Koestler & J. R. Smythies, ed., Beyond Reductionism: New Perspectives in the Life Sciences, London: Hutchinson 
• Korotayev, A.; Malkov, A.; Khaltourina, D. (2006), Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Compact Macromodels of the World System Growth, Moscow: URSS, ISBN 5-484-00414-4, http://cliodynamics.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=124&Itemid=70 
• Krugman, Paul (1996), The Self-organizing Economy, Oxford: Blackwell, ISBN 1-55786-698-8 and 0-87609-177-X 
• Laughlin, Robert (2005), A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-03828-X 
• Leland, W.E.; Taqqu, M.S.; Willinger, W.; Wilson, D.V. (1994), "On the self-similar nature of Ethernet traffic (extended version)", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 2: 1–15, DOI:10.1109/90.282603 
• Lewes, G. H. (1875), Problems of Life and Mind (First Series), 2, London: Trübner, ISBN 1-4255-5578-0 
• Lewin, Roger (2000), Complexity - Life at the Edge of Chaos (second ed.), University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-47654-5 & ISBN 0-226-47655-3 
• Ignazio Licata & Ammar Sakaji (eds) (2008). Physics of Emergence and Organization, ISBN 978-981-277-994-6, World Scientific and Imperial College Press.
• Määttä, Urho (2000), "Mistä on pienet säännöt tehty?", Virittäjä 2: 203–221 
• Marshall, Stephen (2009), Cities Design and Evolution, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-42329-5 & ISBN 978-0-415-42329-8 
• Mill, John Stuart (1843), "On the Composition of Causes", A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive (1872 ed.), London: John W. Parker and Son, p. 371 
• Morowitz, Harold J. (2002), The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-513513-X 
• Ryan, Alex J. (2006), "Emergence is Coupled to Scope, not Level", Complexity (arXiv) (to be submitted), arXiv:nlin.AO/0609011 
• Schelling, Thomas C. (1978), Micromotives and Macrobehaviour, W. W. Norton 
• Jackie (Jianhong) Shen (2008), Cucker–Smale Flocking Emergence under Hierarchical Leadership In: SIAM J. Applied Math., 68:3,
• Smith, John Maynard; Szathmáry, Eörs (1997), The Major Transitions in Evolution, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-850294-X 
• Smith, Reginald D. (2008), The Dynamics of Internet Traffic: Self-Similarity, Self-Organization, and Complex Phenomena, 0807, arXiv, pp. 3374, arXiv:0807.3374, Bibcode 2008arXiv0807.3374S 
• Solé, Ricard and Goodwin, Brian (2000) Signs of life: how complexity pervades biology, Basic Books, New York.
• Steels, Luc (1990), "Towards a Theory of Emergent Functionality", in Jean-Arcady Meyer; Stewart W. Wilson, From Animals to Animats (Proceedings of the First International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive behaviour), Cambridge, MA & London, England: Bradford Books (MIT Press), pp. 451–461, http://cse.ucdavis.edu/~dynlearn/dynlearn/RoMADS/steels01/index.html 
• Wan, Poe Yu-ze (2011), "Emergence a la Systems Theory: Epistemological Totalausschluss or Ontological Novelty?", Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 41(2), pp. 178–210, http://pos.sagepub.com/content/41/2/178.abstract 
• Wan, Poe Yu-ze (2011), Reframing the Social: Emergentist Systemism and Social Theory, Ashgate Publishing, http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409411529 
• Weinstock, Michael (2010), The Architecture of Emergence - the evolution of form in Nature and Civilisation, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0-470-06633-4 [3]
• Wolfram, Stephen (2002), A New Kind of Science, ISBN 1-57955-008-8 
• Young, Louise B. (2002), The Unfinished Universe, ISBN 0-19-508039-4 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Emergence

• The Emergent Universe: An interactive introduction to emergent phenomena, from ant colonies to Alzheimer's.
• Exploring Emergence: An introduction to emergence using CA and Conway's Game of Life from the MIT Media Lab
• ISCE group: Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Emergent Properties
• Towards modeling of emergence: lecture slides from Helsinki University of Technology
• Biomimetic Architecture - Emergence applied to building and construction
• Studies in Emergent Order: Studies in Emergent Order (SIEO) is an open-access journal

David John Chalmers

Born	(1966-04-20) 20 April 1966 (age 46) Australia
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic
Main interests	Philosophy of mind Consciousness Philosophy of language
Notable ideas	Hard problem of consciousness; property dualism; neutral monism; extended mind; two-dimensional semantics
Influenced by Douglas Hofstadter Daniel Dennett

David John Chalmers (born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, whose recent work concerns verbal disputes. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. He is also Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New York University.^[1]

Background[link]

Chalmers was born and raised in Australia, and since 2004 has been Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Centre for Consciousness, and an ARC Federation Fellow at the Australian National University. From an early age, he excelled at mathematics, eventually completing his undergraduate education at the University of Adelaide with a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science. He then briefly studied at Lincoln College at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before studying for his PhD at Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program directed by Andy Clark at Washington University in St. Louis from 1993 to 1995, and his first professorship was at UC Santa Cruz, from August 1995 to December 1998. Chalmers was subsequently appointed Professor of Philosophy (1999–2004) and, later, Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies (2002–2004) at the University of Arizona, sponsor of the Toward a Science of Consciousness^[2] conference where in 1994 he gave a well-received talk that raised his profile in the cognitive science community.^[3]

Chalmers's book, The Conscious Mind (1996), is widely considered (by both advocates and opponents) to be an essential work on consciousness and its relation to the mind-body problem in philosophy of mind.^[4] In the book, Chalmers argues that all forms of physicalism (whether reductive or non-reductive) that have dominated modern philosophy and science fail to account for the existence (that is, presence in reality) of consciousness itself. He proposes an alternative dualistic view he calls naturalistic dualism (but which might also be characterized by more traditional formulations such as property dualism, neutral monism, or double-aspect theory). The book was described by The Sunday Times as "one of the best science books of the year".^[5]

Work[link]

Philosophy of mind[link]

Chalmers is best known for his formulation of the notion of a hard problem of consciousness in both his book and in the paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (originally published in The Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1995). He makes the distinction between "easy" problems of consciousness, such as explaining object discrimination or verbal reports, and the single hard problem, which could be stated "why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?" He expressed this distinction at the first Tucson Conference in 1994. The essential difference between the (cognitive) easy problems and the (phenomenal) hard problem is that the former are at least theoretically answerable via the standard strategy in philosophy of mind: functionalism. Chalmers argues for an "explanatory gap" from the objective to the subjective, and criticizes physical explanations of mental experience, making him a dualist.

In support of this, Chalmers is famous for his commitment to the logical (though, importantly, not natural) possibility of philosophical zombies, although he was not the first to propose the thought experiment. These zombies, unlike the zombie of popular fiction, are complete physical duplicates of human beings, lacking only qualitative experience. Chalmers argues that since such zombies are conceivable to us, they must therefore be logically possible. Since they are logically possible, then qualia and sentience are not fully explained by physical properties alone. Instead, Chalmers argues that consciousness is a fundamental property ontologically autonomous of any known (or even possible) physical properties, and that there may be lawlike rules which he terms "psychophysical laws" that determine which physical systems are associated with which types of qualia. He further speculates that all information-bearing systems may be conscious, leading him to entertain the possibility of conscious thermostats and a qualified panpsychism he calls panprotopsychism. Chalmers maintains a formal agnosticism on the issue, even conceding that the viability of panpsychism places him at odds with the majority of his contemporaries.

After the publication of Chalmers's landmark paper, more than twenty papers in response were published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. These papers (by Daniel Dennett, Colin McGinn, Francisco Varela, Francis Crick, and Roger Penrose, among others) were collected and published in the book Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem. John Searle critiqued Chalmers's views in The New York Review of Books.^[6]

With Andy Clark Chalmers has written The Extended Mind, an article about the borders of the mind.^[7]

Philosophy of language[link]

Chalmers is also an important contributor to the philosophy of language. In this area, his contribution mainly focuses on the theory of reference, being concerned with how words secure their referents. He, together with others such as Frank Jackson, proposes a kind of theory called two dimensionalism arguing against Saul Kripke. Before Kripke delivered the famous lecture series Naming and Necessity in 1970, the descriptivism advocated by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell was the orthodoxy. Descriptivism suggests that a name is indeed an abbreviation of a description, which is a set of properties or, as later modified by John Searle, a disjunction of properties. This name secures its reference by a process of properties fitting: whichever object fits the description most, then it is the referent of the name. Therefore, the description is seen as the connotation, or, in Fregean term, the sense of the name, and it is via which the denotation of the name is determined.

However, as Kripke argued in Naming and Necessity, a name does not secure its reference via any process of description fitting. Rather, a name determines its reference via a historical-causal link tracing back to the process of naming. And thus, Kripke thinks that name does not have sense, or, at least, does not have sense which is rich enough to play the reference-determining role. Moreover, name, in Kripke's view, is a rigid designator, which refers to the same object in all possible worlds. Following this line of thought, Kripke suggests that all the scientific identity statement like "Water is H₂O" is also a necessary statement, i.e. true in all possible worlds. Kripke thinks that this is a phenomenon that the descriptivist cannot explain.

And, as also proposed by Hilary Putnam and Kripke himself, Kripke's view on name can also be applied to the reference of natural kind term. The kind of theory of reference that is advocated by Kripke and Putnam is called the direct reference theory.

However, Chalmers disagree with Kripke, and all the direct reference theorists in general. He thinks that there are two kind of intension of a natural kind term, a stance which is now called two dimensionalism. For example, the words,

"Water is H₂O"

are taken to express two distinct propositions, often referred to as a primary intension and a secondary intension, which together compose its meaning.^[8]

The primary intension of a word or sentence is its sense, i.e., is the idea or method by which we find its referent. The primary intension of "water" might be a description, such as watery stuff. The thing picked out by the primary intension of "water" could have been otherwise. For example, on some other world where the inhabitants take "water" to mean watery stuff, but where the chemical make-up of watery stuff is not H₂O, it is not the case that water is H₂O for that world.

The secondary intension of "water" is whatever thing "water" happens to pick out in this world, whatever that world happens to be. So if we assign "water" the primary intension watery stuff then the secondary intension of "water" is H₂O, since H₂O is watery stuff in this world. The secondary intension of "water" in our world is H₂O, and is H₂O in every world because unlike watery stuff it is impossible for H₂O to be other than H₂O. When considered according to its secondary intension, water means H₂O in every world. Via this secondary intension, Chalmers proposes a way to explain the necessity of the identity statement on one hand, and reserve the role of intension/sense in determining the reference, in the other hand.

Verbal disputes[link]

In recent work, Chalmers has concentrated on verbal disputes.^[9] He argues that a dispute is best characterized as "verbal" when it concerns some sentence S which contains a term T such that (i) the parties to the dispute disagree over the meaning of T, and (ii) the dispute arises solely because of this disagreement. In the same work, Chalmers describes novel procedures for the resolution of verbal disputes. One of these he calls the "elimination method", which involves eliminating the contentious term and observing whether any dispute remains.

In media[link]

Chalmers appears in the video documentary "The Roots of the Matrix" (a reference to The Matrix) and presents a novel take on a large part of the "brain in a vat" hypothesis, maintaining that it is not, contrary to common philosophical opinion, a skeptical hypothesis.

He serves on the editorial board of the journals Philo, Consciousness and Cognition, the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and Psyche.

He is also noted for originating the (philosophical) zombie blues^[10] and recently performed as part of the New York Consciousness Collective at the Qualia Fest held December 14, 2010 in New York.^[11]

See also[link]

• PhilPapers

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

A partial list of publications by Chalmers:

• The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996). Oxford University Press. hardcover: ISBN 0-19-511789-1, paperback: ISBN 0-19-510553-2
• Toward a Science of Consciousness III: The Third Tucson Discussions and Debates (1999). Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak and David J. Chalmers (Editors). The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-58181-7
• Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (2002). (Editor). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514581-X or ISBN 0-19-514580-1
• The Character of Consciousness (2010). Oxford University Press. hardcover: ISBN 0-19-531110-8, paperback: ISBN 0-19-531111-6

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (October 2011)

• Official website
• David Chalmers's bibliography
• Fragments of Consciousness - Chalmers's blog.
• Interview with Chalmers - in Philosophy Now.
• Consciousness, an episode of Philosophy Talk, hosts Chalmers
• Video Interview on BloggingHeads.tv by science writer John Horgan.
• The Mystery of Consciousness on Bright SBM Production.

Order from Chaos was an extreme metal band formed in 1987 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA by Pete Helmkamp, Chuck Keller and Mike Miller. They are recognised as being an extremely influential group in the early US black metal scene, and served as a launching pad for its band members that went on to form such groups as Angelcorpse, Ares Kingdom, Revenge, Vulpecula, and Kerasphorus.

Biography[link]

Order from Chaos, a trio consisting of Pete Helmkamp (vocals/bass), Chuck Keller (guitar) and Mike Miller (drums), was formed in Kansas City, Missouri during 1987, playing a mixture of old school thrash, black and death metal, influenced by the likes of Venom, Bathory and Celtic Frost.^[1] The band released a trio of demos in 1988, until a fourth (Crushed Infamy), which sold 1000 copies, attracted the attention of Putrefaction Records who released the Will to Power 7" EP, limited to 1100 copies. The band then signed a record deal with Wild Rags in 1989, who released cassette versions of the Crushed Infamy demo and Will to Power.^[2][3] A final demo, Alienus Sum, was released in 1992 by the band, featuring three rough mixes from their delayed debut album and a couple of rehearsal tracks; an official cassette version of the demo was released through Chilean label Hexateuc Torment.

Despite being recorded in April/May 1991, Order from Chaos' debut album, Stillbirth Machine, was finally released in 1993 through Wild Rags, despite the label dropping the band in November 1992.^[3] Around the same time, the album was also released by Greek label Decapitated Records (now Unisound Productions). This version, which differs from the Wild Rags in terms of artwork and layout and contains numerous textual errors, is apparently considered a bootleg version by the band.^[3] The album was given official re-releases by Osmose Productions in 1998 (including the Crushed Infamy demo) and Nuclear War Now! in 2008 (on both black and clear yellow vinyl). The album has reviewed some critical acclaim; Terrorizer included it in their "top 40 death metal albums you must hear", at number 40. James Hoare commented, "The blasphemous babysteps of Peter Helmkamp, [...] Order from Chaos courted black metal's glass shards of spite and embittered, semi-mystical worldview in an ear when the two genres were defined by their opposition, setting down the foundations for further esoteric and impenetrable coupling.".^[4]

A series of further EPs were recorded and released throughout 1994 on various labels (Jericho Trumpet on Gestapo, Live: Into Distant Fears on Eternal Darkness and Plateau of Invincibility on Shivadarshana), followed by a second full-length, Dawn Bringer, on Shivadarshana, before the band decided to call it quits in 1995.^[1] After Shivardashana folded, French label Osmose picked up tracks recorded in 1995 for Order from Chaos' third and final album and released An Ending in Fire in 1998, as well as re-releasing their debut.

Pete Helmkamp went on to form death metal act Angelcorpse, as well as writing a book on occultism, entitled The Conqueror Manifesto: Capricornus Teitan.^[1] Chuck Keller and Mike Miller went on to form retro black/thrash band Ares Kingdom and blackened death metal act Vulpecula. With interest in Order from Chaos still prevalent in the extreme metal underground, Merciless records released a compilation of demos, 1994 live tracks and rehearsal sessions, entitled Imperium - The Apocalyptic Visions, in July 2005.

Last known line-up[link]

• Pete Helmkamp (vocals, bass)
• Chuck Keller (guitar)
• Mike Miller (drums)

Discography[link]

Demos[link]

• Demo I (self-released, January 1988)
• Inhumanities (self-released, July 1988)
• Rehearsal (self-released, 1988)
• Crushed Infamy (Wild Rags, July 1989)
• Alienus Sum (self-released, 1992; reissued by Hexateuc Torment, 1994)

EPs[link]

• Will to Power (EP, Putrefaction / Wild Rags, 1990)
• Jericho Trumpet (7" EP, Gestapo, 1994)
• Live: Into Distant Fears (7" EP, Eternal Darkness, 1994)
• Plateau of Invincibility (10" EP, Shivadarshana, 1994)
• Pain Lengthens Time (unreleased EP, 1994; included with the Dawnbringer CD)
• And I Saw Eternity (EP, Ground Zero / Shivadarshana, 1996)

Full-length LPs[link]

• Stillbirth Machine (Wild Rags, 1993; reissued by Osmose, 1998; reissued by Nuclear War Now!, 2008)
• Dawn Bringer (Shivadarshana, 1995; reissed by Fifth Division, 2003)
• An Ending in Fire (Osmose, 1998; reissued by Nuclear War Now!, 2008)
• Imperium - The Apocalyptic Visions (compilation, Merciless, 2005)

References[link]

Bill Viola
Bill Viola in 2009
Born	(1951-01-25) January 25, 1951 (age 61) Queens, New York, USA
Nationality	American
Field	Video art Electronic Art New Media Art
Training	Syracuse University, Syracuse
Works	Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House (1982)
Influenced by	Alberto Giacometti, Joseph Beuys, Mark Rothko

Bill Viola (born January 25, 1951) is a contemporary video artist. He is considered a leading figure in the generation of artists whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media.^[1] His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness.^[2]

Background[link]

Viola grew up in Queens, New York, and Westbury, New York. He attended P.S. 20 Clinton Hill School, in Flushing, where he was captain of the TV Squad. On vacation in the mountains with his family, he nearly drowned in a lake, an experience he describes as “… the most beautiful world I’ve ever seen in my life” and “without fear,” and “peaceful” ^[3]

In 1973, Viola graduated from Syracuse University with a Bachelor in Fine Arts. He studied in the Experimental Studios of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, including the Synapse experimental program, which evolved into CitrusTV.

His first job on graduation was as a video technician at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse. From 1973 to 1980, he studied and performed with composer David Tudor in the new music group "Rainforest" (later called "Composers Inside Electronics"). From 1974-1976, Viola worked as technical director at Art/Tapes/22, a pioneering video studio in Florence, Italy where he encountered video artists Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, and Vito Acconci. From 1976-1983, he was artist-in-residence at WNET Thirteen Television Laboratory in New York. In 1976 and 1977, he traveled to the Solomon Islands, Java, and Indonesia to record traditional performing arts.

Viola was invited to show work at La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia) in 1977, by cultural arts director Kira Perov. Viola and Perov later married, beginning an important lifelong collaboration in working and traveling together. In 1980, they lived in Japan for a year and a half on a Japan/U.S. cultural exchange fellowship where they studied Buddhism with Zen Master Daien Tanaka. During this time, Viola was also an artist-in-residence at Sony Corporation's Atsugi Laboratories.

In 1983, he became an instructor in Advanced Video, California Institute of the Arts, in Valencia, California. In 1995, Viola represented the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale, for which he produced a series of works called Buried Secrets, including one of his best known works The Greeting, a contemporary interpretation of Pontormo's The Visitation. In 1997, a major retrospective of 25 years of Bill Viola's work was organized and internationally toured by the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In 1998, Viola was Getty Scholar-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles [1]. Later, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000. In 2002, he completed Going Forth By Day, a digital “fresco” cycle in High-Definition video, commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 2003,The Passions was exhibited in Los Angeles, London, Madrid, and Canberra. This was a major collection of Viola's emotionally charged slow motion works inspired by traditions within Renaissance devotional painting.

In 2004, Viola began work on a new production of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, a collaboration with director Peter Sellars, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and executive producer Kira Perov. The opera was premiered at the Opéra National de Paris in 2005 and Viola's video work was subsequently shown as LOVE/DEATH The Tristan Project at the Haunch of Venison Gallery and St Olave's School, London, in 2006. During 2007, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Sevilla www.caac.es, organized an exhibition at the Palace of Charles V in la Alhambra- Granada- in which Viola's work dialogues with the Fine Arts Collection of the museum.

In 2009, Bill Viola was awarded the 2009 Catalonia International Prize, known as the XXI Premi Internacional Catalunya 2009 by the Catalonian government of Spain. The award honors an individual "whose creative work has made a significant contribution to the development of cultural, scientific or human values anywhere in the world.".^[4] In Spain it has been published his first biography entitled "Viola on Vídeo", written by Federico Utrera (King Juan Carlos University).

Art work[link]

Bill Viola's exhibition profile, which includes the National Gallery, London, Guggenheim Berlin, Guggenheim New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Getty Los Angeles, California, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York marks him as a major contemporary artist.

His art deals largely with the central themes of human consciousness and experience - birth, death, love, emotion and a kind of humanist spirituality. Throughout his career he has drawn meaning and inspiration from his deep interest in mystical traditions, especially Zen Buddhism, Christian mysticism and Islamic Sufism, often evident in the transcendental quality of some of his works. Equally, the subject matter and manner of western medieval and renaissance devotional art have informed his aesthetic.

An ongoing theme that he constantly explores is dualism, the idea that you can't understand what you're looking at unless you know its opposite. For example, a lot of his work has themes such as life and death, light and dark, stressed and calm, loud and quiet, etc.

His work can be divided into three types, conceptual, visual, and a unique combination of the two. According to art critic James Gardner of the National Review, Viola's conceptual work is forgettable just like most video art. On the other hand, Gardner feels that Viola's visual work such as "The Veiling", and his combination of both the conceptual and visual such as "The Crossing" are impressive and memorable.^[5]

Viola's work often exhibits a painterly quality, his use of ultra-slow motion video encouraging the viewer to sink into to the image and connect deeply to the meanings contained within it. This quality makes his work perhaps unusually accessible within a contemporary art context. As a consequence, his work often receives mixed reviews from critics, some of whom have noted a tendency toward grandiosity and obviousness in some of his work. Yet it is this very ambitiousness, his striving toward meaning, and attempts to deal with the big themes of human life, that also make his work so clearly appreciated by other critics, his audiences and collectors.

His early work established his fascination with issues that continue to inform his work today. In particular, Viola's obsession with capturing the essence of emotion through recording of its extreme display began at least as early as his 1976 work, The Space Between the Teeth, a video of himself screaming, and continues to this day with such works as the 45-second Silent Mountain (2001), which shows two actors in states of anguish.

If Viola's depictions of emotional states with no objective correlative -- emotional states for which the viewer has no external object or event to understand them by—are one feature of many of his works, another, which has come to the forefront, is his reference to medieval and classical depictions of emotion. Most immediately, his subdued Catherine's Room 2001, has many scene by scene parallels with Andrea di Bartolo's 1393 St. Catherine of Siena Praying.

Viola's work has received critical accolades. Marjorie Perloff, best known for her poetry criticism and her promotion of avant-garde writers and styles, singles him out for praise. Perloff, who has written at length about the necessity of poetic works responding to and taking advantage of contemporary computer technologies, has written of Viola as an example of how new technology—in his case, the video camera—can create entirely new aesthetic criteria and possibilities that did not exist in previous incarnations of the genre -- in this case, theater.^[6]

Video Art Projects[link]

While many video artists have been quick to adopt new technologies to their medium, Viola relies little on computer editing. Perhaps the most technically challenging part of his work—and that which has benefited most from the advances since his earliest pieces—is his use of extreme slow motion.

The Quintet Series[link]

The Quintet Series 2000 is one such piece (actually a set of four separate videos), that shows the unfolding expressions of five actors in such slow motion that every minute detail of their changing expressions can be detected. The series is a challenging one for the viewer, because the concentration required to follow the facial expressions over time must last for minutes or more. In general, the distortion of time, along with the lack of sound or voice over, form the most immediately ""new"" aspects of Viola's work for the first-time viewer.

In 2000, Bill Viola collaborated with the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, and its lead singer Trent Reznor to create a video suite for the band's tour. The triptych mainly is focused on water imagery and was supposed to be integral with the songs that were played.^[7]

An Ocean Without a Shore[link]

In 2007, Viola was invited back to the 52nd Venice Biennale to present an installation called "Ocean without a Shore," which was seen by over 60,000 viewers throughout its duration. In this piece, exposed in the little but perfectly fitted Church of San Gallo, Viola is exploring life and death. The experiment consists of people standing in the foreground with nothing but black behind them. Each of them seem to produce gallons of water from themselves as if they were waterfalls. The water comes gushing out of their bodies as if they are being reborn. The very last individual is an elderly man who actually glows a supernatural green while dozens of gallons of water erupts from his body. There are 2 individuals in the middle of the piece who only seem to trickle water, while all the others produce a waterfall of water (Sal 2008). Viola says that this piece is about how the dead are undead. That once they get through the water they are conscious again.

Observance[link]

Observance 2002, is a work which may be taken partly as a response to the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks. Observance places the camera at eye level facing the head of a line of people of a wide variety of ages. As Observance unfolds, the line slowly advances, with each person pausing at the front of the line in a state of intense—though quiet—grief, before ceding their place to the next person in line.

The Tristan Project[link]

In 2004, Viola embarked on The Tristan Project. At the invitation of opera director Peter Sellars, he created video sequences to be shown as a backdrop to the action on stage during the performance of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde. Using his trademark extreme slow motion, Viola's pieces used actors to portray the metaphorical story behind Wagner's story, seeing for example the first act as an extended ritual of purification in which the characters disrobe and wash themselves before finally plunging headlong into water together (in Wagner's story, the two characters maintain the facade of being indifferent to each other (necessary because Isolde is betrothed to Tristan's uncle) before, mistakenly believing they are going to die anyway, and reveal their true feelings). Viola trademarks such as fire and water are much in evidence here. The piece was first performed in Los Angeles at Disney Hall on 3 separate evenings in 2004, one act at a time, then given complete performances at the Bastille Opera in Paris in April and November 2005.^[8] The video pieces were later shown in London without Wagner's music in June to September 2006, at the Haunch of Venison Gallery and St Olave's College, London. The Tristan project returned, both in music and video, to the Disney Hall in Los Angeles in April 2007, with further performances at New York City's Lincoln Center in May 2007 and at the Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in September 2007.

The Night Journey[link]

In 2005, he began working with the USC EA Game Innovation Lab on the art game, The Night Journey, a project based on the universal story of an individual's mystic journey toward enlightenment.^[9] The game was presented to the public in April 2010.

Bodies of Light[link]

In October 2009, Viola’s solo exhibition entitled "Bodies of Light” appeared at the James Cohan Gallery in New York. Featured in the exhibition was Pneuma (1994), a projection of alternating images evoking the concept of fleeting memories. Also on view were several pieces from the Viola’s ongoing "Transfiguration" series, which he evolved from his 2007 installation Ocean Without a Shore.^[10]

Bill Viola Studio[link]

Bill Viola Studio is run by his wife, Kira Perov, who is the executive director. She has worked with Viola since 1978 managing and assisting Viola with his videotapes and installations. She documents their work in progress on location. All of the production done at the studio is edited by Perov.^[11]

News[link]

Bill Viola was awarded the XXIst Catalonia International Prize on May 11, 2009. The [Premi Internacional Catalunya was created by the autonomous government of Catalonia, the Generalitat de Catalunya, to be awarded to those who make notable contributions to the advancement of human, cultural, and scientific values.^[12]

Viola's Three Structures[link]

Viola felt as if there are 3 different structures to describe patterns of data structures. There is the branching structure, matrix structure, and schizo structure.^[13]

"The most common structure is called branching. In this structure, the viewer proceeds from the top to bottom in time." ^[14] The branching structure of presenting data is the typical narrative and linear structure. The viewer proceeds from a set point A to point B by taking an exact path, the same path any other reader would take. An example of this is Google because users go into this website with a certain mindset of what they want to search for, and they get a certain result as they branch off and end at another website.

The second structure is the Matrix structure. This structure describes media when it follows nonlinear progression through information. The viewer could enter at any point, move in any direction, at any speed, pop in and out at any place.^[14] Like the branching structure, this also has its set perimeters. However, the exact path that is followed is up to the user. The user has the option of participating in decision-making that affect the viewing experience of the media. An example of this is Public Secrets [2], a website that reveals secrets of the justice and the incarceration system within the US for women. There is a set boundary of what users can and can't do while presenting them with different themes and subjects users are able to view. Different users will find themselves taking different paths, using flash cues to guide themselves through the website. This vast selection of paths presents many users with a unique viewing experience (in relation to that of the previous persons). As well, they have the choice to read the excerpts from these women or hear it out loud. This connects to Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths" ^[15] where the participant has a variety of choices on how they see a story unfold before them. Each time, they can create a different path.

The last structure is called the schizo, or the spaghetti model. This form of data structure pertains to pure or mostly randomness. "Everything is irrelevant and significant at the same time. Viewers may become lost in this structure and never find their way out."^[14]

Solo exhibitions[link]

• 1973 "New Video Work," Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
• 1974 "Bill Viola: Video and Sound Installations," The Kitchen Center, New York
• 1979 "Projects: Bill Viola," The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• 1983 "Bill Viola," ARC, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
• 1985 "Summer 1985," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• 1985 "Bill Viola," Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
• 1987 "Bill Viola: Installations and Videotapes," The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• 1988 "Bill Viola: Survey of a Decade," Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas
• 1989 "Bill Viola," Fukui Prefectural Museum of Art, Fukui City, Japan, part of The 3rd Fukui International Video Biennale.
• 1990 "Bill Viola: The Sleep of Reason," Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Jouy-en-Josas, France
• 1991 "Bill Viola: The Passing," South London Gallery, London, England
• 1992 "Bill Viola: Nantes Triptych," Chappelle de l'Oratoire, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France
• 1992 "Bill Viola," Donald Young Gallery, Seattle, Washington (five installations)
• 1992 "Bill Viola: Two Installations," Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, England
• 1992 "Bill Viola. Unseen Images," Stadtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany. Travels to: Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (1993); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (1993); Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (1993); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England (1993), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (1994)
• 1994 "Bill Viola: Stations," American Center inaugural opening, Paris, France
• 1994 "Bill Viola: Território do Invisível/Site of the Unseen," Centro Cultural/Banco do Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• 1995 "Buried Secrets," United States Pavilion, 46th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Travels to Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany (1995); Arizona State University Art Museum (1996)
• 1996 "Bill Viola: New Work," Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia (installation)
• 1996 "Bill Viola: The Messenger," Durham Cathedral, Visual Arts UK 1996, Durham, England. Travels to South London Gallery, London, England (1996); Video Positiva-Moviola, Liverpool, England; The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Oriel Mostyn, Gwynedd, Wales; The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (1997); La Chapelle Saint Louis de la Salpetriere, Paris
• 1997 “Bill Viola: Fire, Water, Breath,” Guggenheim Museum (SoHo), New York
• 1997 “Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey” organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art (catalogue). Travels to Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1998); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1998) (catalogue); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (1999); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (1999); Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (1999–2000)
• 2000 “The World of Appearances,” Helaba Main Tower, Frankfurt, Germany (permanent installation)
• 2000 “Bill Viola: New Work,” James Cohan Gallery, New York
• 2000 “Bill Viola: Stations,” Museum für Neue Kunst|ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany
• 2001 “Bill Viola: Five Angels for the Millennium,” Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
• 2002 "Bill Viola: Going Forth By Day," Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
• 2003 "Bill Viola: The Passions," Getty Museum, Los Angeles
• 2003 "Bill Viola," Kukje Gallery, Seoul
• 2003 "Bill Viola: Five Angels for the Millennium," Ruhrtriennale, Gasometer, Oberhausen, Germany
• 2003 "Bill Viola: The Passions," National Gallery, London
• 2004 "Bill Viola: Temporality and Transcendence," Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
• 2005 "Bill Viola: The Passions," Fundación "la Caixa," Madrid, Spain
• 2005 "Bill Viola Visions," ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark
• 2005 "Bill Viola," James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA
• 2005 "Tristan und Isolde," fully staged opera premiere at the Opéra National de Paris, France
• 2006 "Bill Viola – Video", 2006 Recipient of the NORD/LB Art Prize, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany
• 2006 "LOVE/DEATH The Tristan Project," Haunch of Venison (two venues), London, UK
• 2007 "Bill Viola: Hatsu-Yume (First Dream)", Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Hyōgo Prefectural Art Museum, Kobe, Japan, including the 56-minute title piece and many works from the artist's private collection.
• 2007 "Bill Viola: Four hands (2001), kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland.
• 2008 "Bill Viola: Hatsu-Yume (First Dream)",[CACMalaga],Spain until 30 April
• 2008-9 "Bill Viola: Ocean without a shore", National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
• 2009 "Bill Viola: Intimate work", Museum De Pont, Tilburg, Netherlands
• 2010-11 "Bill Viola: The Raft", Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI) and Kaldor Public Art Projects, Australia

Awards[link]

• 1984 Polaroid Video Art Award for outstanding achievement, USA
• 1987 Maya Deren Award, American Film Institute, USA
• 1989 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, USA
• 1993 Skowhegan Medal (Video Installation), USA
• 1993 Medienkunstpreis, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, and Siemens Kulturprogramm, Germany
• 2003 Cultural Leadership Award, American Federal of Arts, USA
• 2006 NORD/LB Art Prize, Bremen, Germany
• 2009 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, MIT, Cambridge, MA ^[16] He was awarded $75,000 and was able to go to MIT and help enhance the creative groups there.
• 2009 Catalonia International Prize, Barcelona, Spain^[2]
• 2010 Honorary doctorate from the University of Liège,^[17] Belgium
• 2011 Praemium Imperiale, Japan

See also[link]

• List of video artists

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bill Viola

• Bill Viola's Official Website
• Bill Viola on Charlie Rose
• Bill Viola at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Bill Viola in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Bill Viola collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Interview with Bill Viola
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - comprehensive feature on Bill Viola - 25 year survey exhibition 1999
• Tate Modern - Bill Viola talks about his work June 2006
• Bill Viola at Mediateca Media Art Space
• James Cohan Gallery Works, biography, video clips, articles and reviews.
• Bill Viola's "Space Between the Teeth" on WGBH's New Television Workshop.
• Bill Viola's "Reverse Television" on WGBH's New Television Workshop.
• Bill Viola's Profile on the Getty site
• The Passions, Getty
• The Passions, National Gallery, London
• Guardian review of LOVE/DEATH Tristan Und Isolde
• Bill Viola talks to The Independent about The Passions
• Viola's exhibition at the Centre of Contemporary Art Malaga
• Bill Viola-Interview With The US Video Artist, Designboom
• "Flow and Presence in Bill Viola's ‘The Passing’"
• "Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?" by Bill Viola
• "22nd Premi Internacional Catalunya 2010"
• Bill Viola on Facebook
• Bill Viola biography on Media Art Net
• ZKM