Steven Johnson’s Emergence

The wave phenomenon that occurs at sports stadiums gives the illusion of movement, a rolling surge of activity that sweeps round and round the bleachers. The phenomenon is not confined to any one sport or even any one culture, but occurs around the world in a wide variety of venues.

There is no hierarchy to the wave. No one choreographs its behavior. In reality, we are only seeing individual people acting on a simple rule: If the person to your left stands up, stand up. If the person to your right stands up, sit down. Thousands of individual units following this simple rule generate a spectacular result.

It bares similarity to electrical impulses traveling through heart tissue or the propagation of forest fires. Similar to these phenomenons it merely takes a small cluster of individual instances to instigate it. Just as a spark can create a forest fire, a small cluster of fans can jumpstart a wave. Once begun, it takes on a life of its own.

This is one example of how low-level phenomenons create high-level results, a process known as Emergence. In his book of the same name, Steven Johnson explores this phenomenon in growing levels of complexity from slime molds, to ant colonies, to cities, and software.

Understanding how low-level rules can produce high-level organization destroys many “common sense” paradigms. “The Myth of the Ant Queen,” is one such concept Johnson disproves. The Queen ant does not constitute a centralized control for the hive, but is merely another ant programmed with simple rules. The individual ants themselves are also programmed with simple rules that, in the context of the hive, give the illusion of complex organization, when in fact we are observing another “wave” phenomenon.

What about cities then? The majority of the world now lives in cities. They produce the majority of the human race’s culture and innovations. Their inhabitants experience lower infant mortality rates and longer life spans. The cities and ant hives comparison is a commonly recognized pattern among human beings.

Some cities, like Baghdad in Iraq, have existed for thousands of years, perpetually changing and evolving. Like ant hives, cities are multi-bodied organisms. Like cells in a living body, the individual units live within them, unaware of the body’s history and condition. Cities are unregulated, despite what their governing body may argue. They are uncontrolled and their beauty and structure are the result of emergence, built on the actions of the millions of individuals living within them. From slime molds, to ant colonies, to cities, and beyond the book explores the implications of Emergence Theory in a variety of situations.

Johnson convincingly takes Emergence Theory into Futurist speculation concerning software. As computer programs grow to levels of complexity exceeding the Programmer’s centralized control, it will eventually become necessary to turn to a guided Emergence Process to develop them. Programming will eventually begin to resemble gardening, where components and functions are evolved out of a primordial soup of code.

Steven Johnson explores all of these dimensions of Emergence Theory, and he does so with eloquence and an engaging writing style that keeps his subject fascinating with possibilities. He is an English major, not a scientist, and this provides him with the aptitude to convey complex concepts with explanations and examples anyone may understand. For readers who appreciate books that change the way they look at the world, “Emergence” is a must read.

Note: I highly recommend checking out Exploring Emergence, which allows “hands on” experimentation with some of the concepts described in this book.

Triumph of Will

I reached a point during Leni Riefenstahl’s film, where I found myself overpowered by its majesty. I became swept up in its images of cooperation and goodwill between citizens, its hopeful vision of a better future, its themes of modernity, bringing society into a new age of possibility. An ideal is parading before my eyes, beautiful, perfect…

…and then Adolh Hitler appears on the screen and a half-century of infamous history shatters the facade.

Leni Riefenstahl’s camera work was groundbreaking and set standards we take for granted in modern cinema. Her camera is dynamic, rotating around statues to give them dimensions, sweeping across throngs of people, and climbing into the sky to catch the enormity of Nazi gatherings. Her shots are very cognizant of their perspective, shooting the Nazi leadership from a lower vantage point to make them tower above the audience.

Controversy has followed Riefenstahl’s career as a documentary filmmaker. Critical Theorists have debated how much responsibility she holds in her service to the Nazi Party. Riefenstahl claims she was merely filming a documentary. Critics claim her omission of the unsavory aspects of Nazism, editing out Hitler’s statements concerning the Jews, push her into the realm of propaganda filmmaking. The disputation over what constitutes documentary versus propaganda filmmaking continues today, with Michael Moore’s selective presentation of the facts in his films.

“Triumph of Will” also raises controversy for the positive and human face it places on the Nazi movement. Some groups believe the film is still dangerous for its seductiveness. Nazism and Fascism are both movements far more concerned with style over substance, and some fear the film’s hypnotic allure is too much for impressionable minds. Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups continue to use the film in the modern day as a recruitment tool.

Congress Hall Scene from Triumph of Will

The film’s dangerousness stresses the importance of remembering it, analyzing it, understanding the magic it works on its viewers. Think the Nazis were merely two-dimensional monsters? Watch “Triumph of Will.” How could honorable and virtuous people be swept up into such abhorrent actions? Watch “Triumph of Will.” Think it could never happen here? Watch “Triumph of Will.”

How would “Triumph of Will” be remembered if the Nazi movement had succeeded? Would its inspiring style and vision successfully erase the atrocities wrought to attain it? Would Riefenstahl’s filmmaking talent continue to churn out “feel good” propaganda to persuade the conquered into compliance with the Nazi vision?

If “Never again!” is civilization’s response to history’s chronicle of Nazism’s rise and fall, then “Triumph of Will” should be a part of every standard educational curricula. It raises difficult questions that demand confrontation to challenge our cognitive schemas. We must compare and contrast its effective vision with the historical reality of its subject matter. We must make ourselves aware of its techniques and see how they are still applied to persuade us into the paradigms of those who would control us.

While I disagree with the ID movement and am deeply troubled with the gains they are making in our public disputations, I think my fellow evolutionists should look on the bright side of this emergence. The fact that ID exists is proof that evolution has gained ground in our civilization’s mindshare.

The creationist movement is dead. It was destroyed on the battlefield of ideas and now its ideological forces are reorganizing into a new militia known as Intelligent Design. Then end goal is the same, prove the existence of a creator by disproving the emergent capabilities of evolution, but its proponents have given ground. Unlike creationism, which sought the complete disproof of evolution, ID concedes evolution as a fact to a degree, but fights it as the explanation for all existence.

In other words, ID has forsaken the Biblical account of creation, accepted the dynamic and evolving state of life as an observable and proven fact, but seeks to draw a line between what emergence theory can account for and argue that what evolution cannot explain implies creation. The core strategy of ID theory is to find a level of irreducible complexity. Just as physicists are always seeking the smaller particle, from the grain of sand, to the molecule, to the atom, to the quark, Intelligent Design proponents are seeking a point in Evolutionary Science where it cannot deconstruct observable facts into hypotheses. If ID can achieve this, then its proponents believe they will have constructed a proof of creation.

The problem is that many of the ideological soldiers who came over from the dismantled Creationist camps are still fighting with their old strategies. Evolutionary Theorists are upset because, after having decisively won the Creationism versus Evolution debate, they are being forced to fight the same war of ideas again. Many Creationists have adopted Intelligent Design in name only, continuing to argue for a literalist interpretation of the Bible’s account of existence.

Incapable of proving cognitive design in the natural world, the ID movement’s focus is to disprove minutia in Evolutionary Theory. While many Evolutionists are aggravated and often outright hostile to ID’s challenges, ultimately this disputation will benefit Evolutionary Theory. Every time an ID proponent challenges one of Evolution’s missing puzzle-pieces, the Evolutionists will strive to fill in the gap.

The focus on disproof that defines the ID movement is such an incredible waste of energy and resources. Instead of defining themselves as merely against evolution, IDers should research some of the more fascinating aspects of reality. They could investigate the number Phi, the “divine” proportion, and try to explain its mysteries. Carl Sagan, in his novel “Contact” fantasized about a hidden message within Pi’s infinite stream of digits. Why doesn’t the ID movement explore and discover all the amazing properties of these two numbers? If the ID movement seeks proof of intellegence woven into the fabric of our reality, then these numbers are a good place to start. It’s a subject most scientists won’t humor, but where a creationist would have a field day. Most importantly, it would change the focus of the ID movement from one of disproof and deconstruction to aspirations of proof and productivity.

I would love to see what they could come up with. It may not convince me, but it would provide inspiration for speculation.

If ID continues to apply this failed strategy, the same it used in its previous incarnation as Creationism, it will eventually fade away. While scientific inquisitiveness and the spirit of exploration work endless to find more answers, ID proponents have only one means to victory: put an end to inquiry. ID, in this state, is an intellectual dead-end.

A school of thought whose end goal is stasis will stagnate and die. Public School children who embrace ID will get laughed out of their College-level Biology classes. It may seem like a waste of time for Evolutionists to fight ID, but ultimately the fight will gain Evolution more mindshare and encourage scientists to work out all of the unknowns. A public forum will educate the public concerning evolutionary theory and a disputational challenge will inspire more proponents to join the fray.

Evolutionists must remember that challenges are exercises in falsifying hypotheses. They make evolution the stronger school of thought. Creationists and ID’s can only rally against evolution because they cannot proactively prove their own hypotheses. Evolutionary Theory becomes a stronger, more comprehensive belief system as it rises to each question the ID movement demands it answer.

At the same time, Evolutionists must maintain an open mind on a personal level. Creationist hypotheses do nothing to constructively explain our observations of the world, but as individuals we are intelligent enough to realize that the emergent process of evolution does not in any way negate the possibility of creation. Both concepts may exist side by side in harmony. The ID movement’s inability to accept this possibility betrays the fragile construction of their own belief systems.

God, whatever it may be, can coexist with a comprehensive Evolutionary Theory.