Emergent Properties Quotes

“From this failure to expunge the microeconomic foundations of neoclassical economics from post-Great Depression theory arose the "microfoundations of macroeconomics" debate, which ultimately led to a model in which the economy is viewed as a single utility-maximizing individual blessed with perfect knowledge of the future.

Fortunately, behavioral economics provides the beginnings of an alternative vision of how individuals operate in a market environment, while multi-agent modelling and network theory give us foundations for understanding group dynamics in a complex society. These approaches explicitly emphasize what neoclassical economics has evaded: that aggregation of heterogeneous individuals results in emergent properties of the group, which cannot be reduced to the behavior of any "representative individual." These approaches should replace neoclassical microeconomics completely.”
― Steve Keen, Adbusters #84 Pop Nihilism

“Le Cardinal's conclusion suprised him. L'Arche produced a collective intelligence that was greater than the sum of its parts; interaction between the able and the disabled produced points of view that were more sophisticated than either group reported on its own.”
― Ian Brown, The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son

“What Are Emergent Properties? By Edward Mercer

An old saying tells us that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A fancier way of saying this is with the term emergent properties, a term used in science, systems theory, philosophy, urban studies and even art. "Emergent properties" refer to those properties that are entirely unexpected and include emergent phenomena in materials and emergent behavior in living creatures. They arise from the collaborative functioning of a system, but do not belong to any one part of that system. In other words, emergent properties are properties of a group of items, whether insects, atoms or buildings, that you would not find in any of the individual items.”
― Edward Mercer