Thank you for letting me use your blog to transfer such a long comment for “pastorboy”. I could not find an email address on his website to send him the information. I have since been able to contact him with some information on the scientific aspects of “emergent concepts and behaviours”. You are welcome to delete the comment now if you want too. Thank you again for letting me comment on your blog.

F Whittenburg
http://www.christiannewbirth.com

Hello Pastorboy,
Here is my contribution to your book on “emergence / emergent behavior”. I cannot find your email address so I will post it here and you can just cut and paste the text of the comment section. I am going to share with you my observations on “emergent behavior” from the scientific perspective. In this study, I applied well documented “emergent concepts” that have been theorized since the middle 1,800’s to a hypothetical organization to see what one might look like. Here is a good scientific explanation I found of “emergent concept and behaviour”. http://www.answers.com/topic/emergence-1 . You would do well to read it after you have read this. It may clear away some of the mystery surrounding “emergent behaviour” and give you some insight.
“An emergent concept (EC) is a slight variation on consensus reality that is accepted as plausible. The hallmarks of an emergent concept, as opposed to some categories of memes (urban myths, or viruses of the mind) are that EC are increasingly accepted as truth or possibility, based upon other empirical or anecdotal evidence in the mind of the believer or society (in its subsets) as a whole. EC can be viewed as fad, or common causal reality building. EC have no relationship to truth or fact, but are simply engines bringing individual concepts of truth into the mainstream.” (Bold added to existing text)
For example, if a group of “social engineers” applied “emergent concepts” to an organization of people, that organization would not have any real need or desire to understand truth, search for truth, defend truth, or embrace truth because the “emergent model” is designed to “create” truth. This is similar to consensus reality where multiple views on something like religion are all tossed together in a conversation and discussed until what is agreed upon finally as “reality” by the organization or group becomes the new “truth”. The consensus is easily accepted by everyone in the group as “plausible truth” because all members had a hand in creating it. If you are on the outside studying organizations applying “emergent concepts” it is interesting to watch, but to someone inside that organization it would be almost impossible for them to see what was being done to them. You could give them the impression that “emergence” that they are a part of is actually a representation of a little fresh budding leaf of beautiful new growth. They would be like happy, busy laboratory rats in some big social engineering experiment working through a maze. All they would know is that every time something “changes” or “shifts” in the paradigm then there is a new “truth” to be discovered and then they start looking forward to constantly changing “truths” with new “truths” constantly being discovered. This could theoretically go on indefinitely, as long as everything is constantly kept changing and shifting. A whole new paradigm could result.
Here is another scientific explanation of “emergent behaviour” from the same site: http://www.answers.com/topic/emergence-1
“An emergent behaviour or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviours 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. 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. No physical property of an individual molecule of air would lead one to think that a large collection of them will transmit sound.“ (bold added to existing text)

As with the air molecule analogy, one individual with one mind set and purpose could only do so much on their own, but just imagine a whole world that was driven to one “purpose” and vision like one big global brain thinking the same thoughts.

“ According to an emergent perspective, intelligence emerges from the connections between neurons, and from this perspective it is not necessary to propose a “soul” to account for the fact that brains can be intelligent, even though the individual neurons of which they are made are not.”

By applying the concept of “emergence” to all of humanity, humankind theoretically could “emerge” into a whole new “reality”. Possibly a new world order, or even an attempt to bring Heaven to earth? (Genesis 11:4-7 KJV). I know that sounds very unrealistic, because to achieve something like that, you would have to teach all humanity a new way to “think” in terms of groups (i.e. group think). Someone once said: “I would like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony”. To be of maximum effectiveness, you would have to teach all in the emergent organization how to focus and center their thoughts and prayers the most effectively. Think of the possibilities. The Bible says that nothing would be restrained from man if all mankind could imagine it.

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is ONE, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now NOTHING will be restrained from them, which they IMAGINED to do (Genesis 11:6 KJV).

Here is an interesting link I found: http://www.humanemergence.org/

I personally though believe that consensus reality as it has been used in history has been shown to be a flawed way to come to a clear concept of the “reality” to be embraced by society. Example: All the great scholars have reached a consensus; we believe that in reality, the earth is “flat”! Sir Isaac Newton is a heretic and a madman that must be hunted down and killed because he thinks the earth is round!

For “emergent behaviour” to manifest in the organization, you would first need to create unity and drive in the organization with a single purpose and vision. Then you would have to drive out all that are not in unity and at the same time shield the target organization from the dissenters until the desired behaviour has time to “emerge”. You can then go back and deal with the resistors later, after the emergent behaviour has begun manifesting. You could reach out and offer them one last chance to join you.
“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.”
One unique thing about “emergent behaviour”, is it can be observed in small groups also, without a centralized structure and command.
“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 to 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 (all faiths), organization (small groups), and connectivity (love, social justice, environment, etc.) before emergent behaviour appears.” (bold words in parentheses added).
I have seen really no one discuss “emergent concepts and behaviours” on any blogs from a scientific perspective. Am I the only one that finds this stuff fascinating?
F Whittenburg
http://www.christiannewbirth.com/whenfaithcame.html

Bring your comments and questions and discussion.

I going to go see about a girl….

since “Absolute truth is at best an 1860 development… Truth being the Person… is not some abstract thought detached from Jesus… Truth is Truth…

How do I get that?

Let your yes by yes and your no be no…

Now also, if you add “Absolute” to truth, you then need deal with “lesser truths”… which in my book are called “lies”… but if you add “absolute” then you must deal with lesser not so absolute truths.

Also, show me in the Bible that Truth is ever described in such a way? So, again this is adding to the definition of “truth” in the bible.

If something is “true” it cannot be made more true or less true and remain true.

It is like “unique”… it is or it is not… to say something is really unique is redundant. Like Chili con care with meat… does it make the chili more meaty to say meat with meat?

This adding of “absolute” also as I stated creates an “abstractness” to Truth… Jesus is Truth incarnate… for He is The Truth… to state that He is absolute truth does not make Jesus more Truthy… or whatever…

But, it does then make it that Truth can somehow be separate from Jesus as if Truth is some absolute abstract thought… then it places “Thought” equal with Jesus… meaning that Jesus and man’s imagination are then equal… this then makes man’s mind and thinking apart from God… divine in its own right… and that is dangerous theology!

Man is in no way equal to God, but Plato, who taught dualism… which is at the root of all this taught that “thought” was more real than “material” and that is Gnosticism.

Truth is truth and does not need Gnosticism to make it more true than the Bible states it is. Again this is dangerous stuff as if we add we dilute.

Note, if I am speaking in the realm of “philosophy” I will use the “absolute” idea, but to bring someone to the point that when they meet Jesus that absolute becomes personalized in the Person of Jesus and becomes, simply Truth. For it is from Jesus all Truth comes.

iggy

Scot McKnight would be my best suggestion on ECM questions as well.

Be careful though; “My boy is wicked smart” (a movie reference of my own)