Emergence is The New Amazing Field of Science
Depiction of Entropy Increasing — Image by Pixabay

Does emergence violate the second law of thermodynamics?

Many people describe emergent behaviors as spontaneous activities toward a state of order. The second law of thermodynamics claims that systems will always move toward a state of disorder. But when we observe single-celled organisms like slime mold join together and function as an organized unit, this appears to contradict this law completely.

This is not the first time that biological systems have challenged the second law of thermodynamics. As life evolves to changing conditions to survive, it poses a challenge to this law.

But in this case, defenders of the second law argue that while it does state that the order of a system must decrease, it doesn’t say when, where, and how. They then point out that emergent communities like slime mold become disordered again after achieving its objective as a collective group. Therefore, it is not defying the second law — not everyone agrees.

Required ingredients of emergence

To observe emergence in nature, certain requirements must be in place. To begin with, there must be a sufficient quantity of individual units. A handful of individuals usually don’t show emergent patterns, but thousands of them do. The whole system has to be observed to witness a pattern or structure of emergence.

Interestingly, the simple nature of the individual units is essential in the emergent world. In fact, the more ignorant they are, the better. Consider how computers are built using the basic binary system of ones and zeros. If any of its components become too smart, they will make decisions based on their own needs and not the system's needs.

Emergence is also dependent on random encounters and actions. Much like the sampling methods that statisticians use in their studies, if their samples are not random, then biases will be introduced into their results. Emergent behavior relies heavily on these haphazard interactions; otherwise, its biases might refuse to recognize needs or dangers to the group.

Finally, local information gathered from individual units eventually becomes wisdom for the entire community. It begins with single units sharing data with one another, rather than with a community leader, and the network gradually begins to act for the common good of the entire group.
['Charles Stephen']
['Philosophy', 'Biology', 'Technology', 'Science', 'Nature']