The concept of emergence plays a central role across physics, biology, and complexity theory. It refers to the arising of order, structure, or behaviour at a higher level of organisation that is not reducible to — or straightforwardly predictable from — the dynamics of lower-level components.
In classical ontology, emergence implies hierarchy: fundamental units combine into compounds; compounds form systems; systems give rise to phenomena. This layered model treats emergence as an additive process — properties appear at one level that are absent from the parts alone. But this is grounded in an object-based metaphysics, where things exist first, and relationships are secondary.
A relational ontology inverts this logic. There are no self-subsisting parts to begin with. What emerges is not a higher level added onto lower components, but differentiated coherence within a unified field of potential. Emergence is recursive resolution: the system reorganising itself in ways that produce new patterns of constraint, which in turn modulate further actualisations.
1. From Levels to Recursions
-
The conventional view stacks levels: quantum → atomic → molecular → cellular → conscious,
-
This hierarchy assumes that each level is built from the previous — and that novelty “emerges” from combinatorics,
-
But relationally, there are no levels — only recurrent differentiations of a single relational field under constraint,
-
Emergence is not additive layering, but recursive construal: each actualisation reshapes the constraint landscape for what may come next.
2. Constraint as the Engine of Emergence
-
In relational terms, potential is structured by constraint: what is not possible shapes what becomes actual,
-
Each act of actualisation is itself a new constraint, modifying the space of potential for the field,
-
Emergence happens when constraints recursively reconfigure the coherence of the field,
-
Thus, what emerges is not “more” than the parts — it is the system’s shifting grammar, unfolding under recursive tension.
3. Meaning as Emergent Coherence
-
In semiotic systems, meaning is not imposed from above or constructed from below — it is emergent in the relational pressure to cohere,
-
Likewise in quantum systems: coherence is not passively preserved but actively resolved through the interplay of systemic constraints,
-
Meaning is not layered atop signals or data — it is the product of the field’s recursive attempts to stabilise under contextual tension.
4. No Base, No Superstructure
-
Traditional accounts of emergence draw a line between “base” and “emergent” — but this misframes the situation,
-
There is no ontological base — no layer more real or primary,
-
The field is holistic and dynamic: emergent structures are not secondary realities, but stable construals within a continuous process of relational modulation.
5. Quantum Emergence as Phase Transition
-
Quantum phase transitions — such as superconductivity or Bose–Einstein condensation — are not “properties” that arise from particles,
-
They are coherent fields of constraint, where the relational structure of the system reaches a threshold of reorganisation,
-
These are not emergent phenomena in the classical sense, but new stabilisations of the relational field, where local distinctions lose salience and global coherence dominates.
Closing
Emergence is not mystery, nor magic, nor the inexplicable leap from matter to mind. It is the field resolving itself: recursively differentiating, re-constraining, and actualising new forms of coherence. No layer is “above” another. No part is primary. There is only relation, tension, and transformation — and from these, the world we call real.
In the next post, we will return to the question of causality, reframing it not as a chain of events, but as a perspectival pattern of dependency and resolution within relational fields.
No comments:
Post a Comment