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integrative concepts Emergent systemsDescription: Prototypical systems that have initially exhibited, as innovations in their time, novel formats of organization that have supported successive increases in adaptive range on the basis of correlative increases in systematic complexity. Properties of emergent systems include: Gestalt novelty (a new form as opposed to combinatorial novelty); Concrescence (process of growing together of previously distinct systems to form a unitary integral structure); Systemic extension (organization of elements, themselves systems, in hierarchical levels connected by regenerative information/control linkages providing for selectivity at every level; is maintained with the incorporation of a new level of organization); Normative innovation: the appearance of an additional level of organization requiring the institution of new norms; Subsystem specialization: the modification of previous subsystems in terms of articulation or differentiation of structure and normative innovation contributing to increased complexity, efficiency, and elegance of structure and behaviour. Negentropy: a general increase in variety and organization, through net gain of potential by a local, metastable system (due to transfer and transformation of energy), and through an increase in decisional degrees of freedom (due to communication and transformation of information). |