I recently heard a fascinating episode from Radiolab (from their archives) about the scientific phenomenon of emergence.  Have you ever heard of it?  It's basically that old idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  But more specifically, it's an observable phenomenon in nature which is perhaps best demonstrated by a colony of ants.  An individual ant is incapable of higher thought; it cannot make decisions or solve problems -- and if the ant is isolated, he will be incapable of much meaningful activity.  However, when an ant colony works together, they have an amazing ability to make decisions and solve problems.  There is no leader who is directing the ants -- no great, overarching vision or strategy -- but somehow, they manage to thrive in some of the most hostile environments on earth because they work in community, allowing group dynamics to empower them for tasks which should by all reasonable means be impossible for such tiny creatures to do.

It all reminds me of Proverbs 30:24-28 (a verse which was actually quoted in the Radiolab episode).  There it says, "Four things on earth are small, yet they are extremely wise:  Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer; coneys are creatures of little power, yet they make their home in the crags; locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks; a lizard can be caught with the hand, yet it is found in kings' palaces." I recently blogged about this section of verses over at Proverbs 365.  But suffice to say:  I'm amazed -- just like King Solomon was and the producers of Radiolab were -- by the phenomenon of emergence, embedded within the natural world.  It feels supernatural, inexplicable... and holy.  Oddly enough, "holy" was the word used to describe the phenomenon by one of the hosts of the radio program, even though I'm quite confident (from listening to several other episodes of the program) that he is an avowed scientific atheist.  Yet even he could not help but be awed by this miracle that we observe in ants, coneys, and locusts (among other creatures).

It turns out that the scientific phenomenon of emergence can also be found within human society.  You know how sometimes kids will have a contest in which they're supposed to guess the number of jelly-beans in a large glass jar?  It's a fairly common "experiment" that can show the occurence of emergence among humans.  Specifically:  there's no really practical way for kids to know any sort of formula for determining how many jelly-beans might fill a given glass jar -- and honestly, even if there were a formula for trying to figure this sort of thing out, it would result in a crude approximation.  Not a precise number.  And typically, when kids in a school class-room try to guess the number of jelly-beans in a jar, no one actually ends up getting the exact number correct.  In fact, most of the guesses are way off -- either much too high of a number or much too low.   But here's what's spooky:  You add up the totals from the guesses and divide it by the number of people guessing (i.e. working out the mean)... and you'll almost always end up with a number that is remarkably close to the actual number of jelly-beans in the jar!  To me, that's simply astounding.  I honestly don't know what to make of it...

Apparently, even our thought processes are an exercise in emergence.  That is:  there's no real technical reason why our brain cells should be able to organize themselves into coherent thoughts.  Again, the radio program explains it better than I ever could -- but really, it is a miracle if you think about it (please excuse the pun).

So what do you think about emergence?  Have you heard any other information to round out the picture of this phenomenon?  I'm curious to research it a bit more...