Intervention for the 1st DGTF Conference
June 20, 2003
The concept of emergence describes the occurrence of properties of a system that cannot be explained by looking at the properties of the individual system components. Examples of this would be the flow speed of road traffic as the sum of the behavior of individual drivers, the quality of teaching and learning as a result of a socio-dynamic process or the establishment of authority, which is assigned to many decision-makers, politicians and managers by office and rank but is ultimately not a property of the person but a quality of the interaction.
Self-organization, bottom-up development principles, connectionism, chaos theory – these are keywords that come into contact with emergence theory issues in one way or another. The term is not only interpreted differently within scientific and philosophical circles, but is also used in everyday language (especially English). There, however, it is used synonymously with the much less specific terms “emergence”, “appearance” or “growth”.
Emergence theories make statements about the world, namely about its state and its development. In other words, there is a synchronous and a diachronic aspect.
The synchronous aspect concerns the state of a system. Synchronous emergence is based on the assumption that a whole can have genuinely different properties to its parts and that these cannot be reduced to the properties of the parts. Table salt does not simply have the sum of the properties of chlorine and sodium; brains think, but individual neurons do not (etc.).
The diachronic aspect deals with the becoming of the world. In the course of time, something genuinely new emerges from something that already exists. For example, primordial soup becomes cells, cells become organisms, some organisms develop group behavior and even consciousness. The term “genuinely new” basically refers to qualitative and rather erratic developments. For example, it would not be described as “emergence” if “a few cells” became “many cells” – this is merely “growth”.
Why is it interesting?
Many discourses explore the form of a departure from reductionism (a part is more important than the whole):
In computer science, self-generating algorithms are being researched (genetic programming), management theory explores the question of how errors in organizational development can be reversed, e.g. by focusing too strongly on just a few decision-makers, finally, cognitive research attempts to explain how consciousness can emerge from biological circuits. Many other examples could be listed here. The question arises as to what role the concept of “emergence” can play in the design context.
Criticism
In the critical discussion of emergent theories, the idea is also formulated that they could be placeholder theories that lose their validity when phenomena generated by new findings can be explained reductionistically.
Do design processes possibly only appear to be “emergent” because we cannot yet explain their composition? One criticism of emergentism is that it is not suitable for developing solutions to problems. However, emergentism does not claim to be a theory of problem solving, but rather a “classificatory enterprise”.
Emergence theories are first and foremost descriptive models and not explanatory models. Emergence can therefore not be regarded as part of a reductionist understanding.
Characteristics
Properties created by emergence cannot (as already mentioned) be reduced to the properties of the parts. Furthermore, they are not predictable. They must also represent a new genuine new quality on a higher level. These higher order properties must have an influence on the lower levels (otherwise the emergent relationship would be meaningless).
What do these characteristics mean in practice?
Conditions for emergent processes In the field of organizational development, for example, prerequisites are formulated for establishing emergent processes in companies:
communicative networking diversification high information flow reduction of development barriers clear framework conditions/rules of the game intention anticipation
Design reference
Niklas Luhmann has described the concept of emergent communication in detail: “Similar to life and consciousness, communication is also an emergent reality, a sui generis state of affairs. It comes about through a synthesis of three different selections – namely selection of an information, selection of a communication of this information and selective understanding or misunderstanding of this communication and its information.”
The design process is a communicative process: the designer engages in a dialog with the environment, the client, possibly colleagues and team members and, of course, with him/herself – indeed, to a certain extent even with the object he/she is designing. This process is thus determined by the selections in the Luhmannian sense.
Or let’s take the term “quality of use”. Behind this term lies the interplay of very different aspects. Does “quality of use” arise in design, in use or in both? The “quality of use” appears to be an emergent property of design-related aspects on the one hand and use-related aspects on the other. It would therefore be impossible to clearly determine the quality of use in advance.
Design therefore appears to be an activity that can never be explained in reductionist terms. However, since turning to holistic ideas of “creative power” as the cause of good design does not seem very tempting either, design can only be assigned an emergentist position for the time being.