Emergence Quotes

• The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.

  Fritjof Capra

  Creativity, Organization, Design

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• The phenomenon of emergence takes place at critical points of instability that arise from fluctuations in the environment, amplified by feedback loops. Emergence results in the creation of novelty, and this novelty is often qualitatively different from the phenomenon out of which it emerged.

  Fritjof Capra

  Science, Differences, Environmental

  Fritjof Capra, Pier Luigi Luisi (2014). “The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision”, p.319, Cambridge University Press

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• This spontaneous emergence of order at critical points of instability, which is often referred to simply as "emergence," is one of the hallmarks of life. It has been recognized as the dynamic origin of development, learning, and evolution. In other words, creativity-the generation of new forms-is a key property of all living systems.

  Fritjof Capra

  Life, Learning, Creativity

  Fritjof Capra, Ugo Mattei (2015). “The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community”, p.97, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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• My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Ideas, Emergencies, Enough

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• The emergence of consciousness, like the unfolding of a leaf, relies upon restraint.

  Peter Atkins

  Rely Upon, Consciousness, Unfolding

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• Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain as unknown to us as those that may exist on the moon.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Persons, Knows

  "In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained".

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• Failure is merely feedback that there is something blocking the path of the emergence and expansion of the greatest version of yourself.

  Mother Teresa

  Block, Failure, Expansion

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• I'm interested in complexity, in the mathematical sense, as well as the idiomatic sense. The idea of emergence - that it's possible for complex patterns to arise out of many simple interactions - is fascinating.

  Hari Kunzru

  Simple, Ideas, Patterns

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• The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love, and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive-it has nothing to do with time. It happens on its own when a human being questions, wonders, inquires, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure, and pain. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open.

  Toni Packer

  Love, Pain, Self

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• Faith in the creative process, in the dynamics of emergence, in the values and purposes that transcend past achievements and past forms, is the precondition of all further growth.

  Lewis Mumford

  Past, Achievement, Creative

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• No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

  Hannah Arendt

  Punishment, Criminals, Crime

  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil epilogue (1963)

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• Our thoughts about the future go far toward creating it; our minds and hears are like filaments taht connect today to tomorrow, they are conduits for either the status quo or the emergence of different, hopefully more loving, possibilities. How we think and how we behave determine where we are going

  Marianne Williamson

  Thinking, Creating, Mind

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• No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

  Hannah Arendt

  Punishment, Criminals, Firsts

  Hannah Arendt (2006). “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, p.238, Penguin

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• Extrapolated, technology wants what life wants:
  Increasing efficiency
  Increasing opportunity
  Increasing emergence
  Increasing complexity
  Increasing diversity
  Increasing specialization
  Increasing ubiquity
  Increasing freedom
  Increasing mutualism
  Increasing beauty
  Increasing sentience
  Increasing structure
  Increasing evolvability

  Kevin Kelly

  Technology, Opportunity, Ubiquity

  Kevin Kelly (2010). “What Technology Wants”, p.244, Penguin

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• The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Appreciation, Intellectual, Criticism

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• Our very success, gained you will agree by skill, will draw more people than ever to see it. And that will benefit many more clubs than Rangers. Let the others come after us. We welcome the chase. It is healthy for us. We will never hide from it. Never fear, inevitably we shall have our years of failure, and when they arrive, we must reveal tolerance and sanity. No matter the days of anxiety that come our way, we shall emerge stronger because of the trials to be overcome. That has been the philosophy of the Rangers since the days of the gallant pioneers.

  Bill Struth

  Success, Being Strong, Football

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• The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.

  Arthur Koestler

  Giving, Intuition, Links

  Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation”

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• System theorists know that it's easy to couple simple-to-understand systems into a "super system" that's capable of displaying behavioral modes that cannot be seen in any of its constituent parts. This is the process called "emergence."

  John L. Casti

  Couple, Simple, Easy

  "What If Everything Went Straight to Hell?". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com.

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• Reductionism is not the right viewpoint for everything, and it certainly won't explain the relationship between the brain and the mind. This is because of a feature known as emergence. When you put together large numbers of pieces and parts, the whole can become something greater than the sum.

  David Eagleman

  Numbers, Brain, Mind

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.226, Vintage

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• Catastrophes are often stimulated by the failure to feel the emergence of a domain, and so what cannot be felt in the imagination is experienced as embodied sensation in the catastrophe.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Imagination, Domain, Feels

  William Irwin Thompson (1987). “Gaia, a Way of Knowing: Political Implications of the New Biology”, Inner Traditions International

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• The advent of Google+ and the emergence of the personalized web means this is more true than ever. Brands, and their advertising partners, must wake up to this challenge and define themselves with clarity, consistency and authenticity. Otherwise they just might find themselves shouting in a ghost town.

  Simon Mainwaring

  Mean, Consistency, Challenges

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• One way to find food for thought is to use the fork in the road, the bifurcation that marks the place of emergence in which a new line of development begins to branch off.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Bifurcation, Use, Development

  William Irwin Thompson (2015). “Self and Society: Studies in the Evolution of Cutlture, Second Enlarged Edition”, p.95, Andrews UK Limited

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• I'm fascinated by the emergence of a global class. They're highly mobile; they reject the idea of place.

  Hari Kunzru

  Class, Ideas, Rejects

  "I'm the bloke who got the big advance" by Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. May 15, 2004.

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• Birth is not an emergency. It is simply an emergence.

  Jeannine Parvati Baker

  Yoga, Emergencies, Birth

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• Of the many unforeseen consequences of typography, the emergence of nationalism is, perhaps, the most familiar

  Marshall McLuhan

  Design, Patriotism, Typography

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