EMERGENCE

Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities categorizes the progression of problem solving into three distinct stages: problems of simplicity - direct causal relationships between two (or few) variables, problems of disorganized complexity - statistical deductions from a great number of variables operating as a group, and problems of organized complexity - as Dr. Weaver puts it: "Much more important than the mere number of variables is the fact that these variables are all interrelated...[these problems] show the essential feature of organization. Our understanding of each type of problem has been a linear chronology, where realization that the nature of the problem is more complex than previously perceived enables us to approach it from a more accurate standpoint. The article goes on to describe life sciences' realizations about problems of organized complexity that led to countless advances in its field - which neatly segues into the stagnancy of city planning due to designers' inability to recognize the problems of the city as ones of organized complexity.

Although emergence is not mentioned at all in the article, the nature of problems of organized complexity points towards the idea of emergence, which deals with how variables interrelate to form a dissimilar collective. Gould & Lewontin's article uses the refutation of Panglossian paradigm to hint at a system of local optimizations that rely on interdependence of non-critical variables, that is more akin to the behavior of emergence. However, I feel as if emergence's ties of biology exists only because we began to understand biological systems in terms of emergent behavior first, and that intrinsic ties to biological systems might be a misconception. When in fact emergence is an effective system to understand the studies of, as Duncan Watts says: "ecology, epidemiology, to sociology and economics, each of which comes with its own rules and principles that are not reducible to a mere knowledge of psychology and biology." Emergence may well be the best current system for us to understand these fields of study, yet it is entirely possible that the progress of problem solving will reveal emergence's shortcomings.