Oriol Artime, Manlio De Domenico (2022), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (vol. 380, issue 2227, art. 20200410; introduction to the theme issue “Emergent phenomena in complex physical and socio-technical systems: from cells to societies”) — ARXIV-2205.11595
Key takeaways
- This introduction to the theme issue proposes no new result. It surveys emergence from quantum matter to epidemics, adopts Chalmers/Bedau “weak emergence” as the scientifically relevant notion, and sketches an operational definition of emergence from local rules plus initial conditions. It argues that a rigorous, accepted definition and the physical conditions that favour emergence remain open problems.
Seeded from the abstract and a skim, before the reading in NOTE-007. What follows is what the work says about itself.
When many similar units interact locally with one another and their environment, unexpected patterns can arise at larger spatial and temporal scales. This is emergence, often tied to collective behaviour and seen in systems from synchronizing oscillators to flocks and schools. Despite abundant examples, there is no widely accepted rigorous definition and no agreed account of the conditions that favour emergence. The article gives a short overview, lists current and future challenges, and introduces and synthesizes the theme issue’s contributions, from the origin of life to disease spread.
Standing in the record
Filed by the reading-time triage of 2026-09-25: 1,065 seconds of active reading over 10 sessions in the papers-feed tracker. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-007 is the close reading of 2026-09-25, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as the table of contents and framing of the Phil. Trans. A theme issue that holds LIT-025 and LIT-027 (§5), and as a quick survey of emergence examples. Do not cite it for a definition of emergence, because its “mathematical” definition leaves the deciding criterion (“unexpected”) informal.
When seeded, before the reading in NOTE-007, the entry gave a priority for a deeper reading: low — A broad editorial review whose value is navigational. The skim captures its framing; read §5 only as a table of contents for the issue (t = 1065 s already spent).
What the seeding asked a deeper reading to check (NOTE-007 is that reading):
- It is useful as a map of the Phil Trans A theme issue that items 21 and 22 belong to; §5 would tell the owner which other papers in the issue to read.
- The only ML mention is in passing (swarm learning compared with federated learning, ref. [188]), and it would need checking against that source.
Access when seeded: Crossref metadata and abstract for the DOI (online 2022-05-23). The arXiv preprint 2205.11595 was posted the same day (20 pp.) and was readable. I read the contents, §3 opening, §4 opening with Fig. 1, and §6 conclusions; I skipped §5, the per-paper summary of the issue. The preprint’s keyword field reads “TBCompleted”, so the keywords above are mine.