a founder of the codex

Emergence

Holobotrys oriens·the Rising Cluster

From Greek holos, whole, and botrys, a cluster of grapes, and Latin oriens, rising; a cluster from which a whole rises.

Level: Conceptorganism
Book: Mineralsthe mineralogical treatise
Phylum: Part and wholeimage schema
Class: Outputits habit
Niche: Producerraw experience
Mode: Organizationhow it keeps existing
Stage: Juvenileindividuating
Status: Living
Habitat: Forest

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Quantity · Wilkins, 1668: Transcendental Mixed · WordNet, 1990: Phenomenon · Llull, 1308: I · Elementative

Rising Cluster, the whole specimen — Plate VIII. Holobotrys oriens, the whole specimen.

When many parts interact, the whole can do what no part can, and that new behaviour needs its own description.

More is different.

behavior Begins as a scatter of tiny seeds that drift toward one another, and blooms only when enough of them have touched.

provocation

What could a group of people do together that none of them could even imagine alone?

Each draw is the being derived afresh by the current laws at another seed (laws §11); the chosen one leads (where they sit in the morphospace).

I Dissection

Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its output, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Emergence — Fig. 1. Kernel
Superorganism
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Wholes can have properties that none of their parts has, arising from how the parts interact rather than from any part alone.^{1, 2}
drawn as: seed crystal · view: series

Boundary of Emergence — Fig. 2. Boundary
Percolation threshold
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is set apart from mere aggregation; a heap of sand has no property its grains lack, while an ant colony does.¹
drawn as: rind · view: cast

Intake of Emergence — Fig. 3. Intake
Nearest neighbours
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It needs many parts, local interactions between neighbours, and often a flow of energy that keeps them from settling.⁴
drawn as: mother liquor · view: cross section

Mechanism of Emergence — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Flocking rules
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
Simple local rules repeated among many parts add up to patterns no part encodes, as in flocks, convection cells and markets.^{2, 3}
drawn as: lattice · view: pinned

Output of Emergence — Fig. 5. Output
Levels of organization
❦ dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It gives new levels of organization with their own laws, so that chemistry is more than physics and a mind more than neurons.¹
drawn as: habit · view: microscope

Dispersal of Emergence — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Murmuration
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels as the saying that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and as the image of the starling murmuration.¹
drawn as: shard · view: transparent

Decay of Emergence — Fig. 7. Decay
Black box
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It can be used to name a mystery instead of explaining it, and it cannot say in advance which wholes will appear.⁵
drawn as: weathering · view: magnified

II Meaning associations

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Offspring

Self-Ending OrderSlope Eater, Clinophagus evanescensby grafting

Food web

succeeds the decay of Entropy → its intake
Entropy cannot say why order arises locally, in life, crystals and storms. Emergence feeds on exactly that, many parts kept from settling by a flow of energy. Emergence lives on Entropy's failure, as both founders' notes predicted.
homology its intake resembles the boundary of Entropy
Entropy holds only in a closed system; open it to a flow of energy and local order can grow. Emergence needs that flow.
homology its mechanism resembles the mechanism of Entropy
Both are many parts exchanging, at random or by local rules. One drifts toward the probable, the other bends into a current.
friction its dispersal rubs against the dispersal of Entropy
Their images are opposites; the melting ice and the shuffled deck against the starling murmuration. Their kernels point the same way, order falling against order rising.

Kin

same kind in Wilkins Entanglement, Entropy, Symmetry, Self-Ending Order

same kind in WordNet Placebo, Rain, Resonance, Resonance (Automata), Storm, Wind

same kind in Llull Amber, Entanglement, Entropy, Erosion, Fire, Rain, Resonance, Resonance (Automata), Salt, Storm, Wind, Self-Ending Order

same phylum Chimera, Syllable, Babelhum, Subtractive Phenomenology

same dominant organ Apophenia, Chiaroscuro, Echolalia, Erosion, Mimesis, Nostalgia, Placebo, Rain, Babelhum, Afterlistening, The Festival Calendar

Genome

whole
interaction
self-organization also in Self-Ending Order
level
novelty

III In the world

Echoes

a starling murmuration
a termite mound built without a plan
a traffic jam that forms with no accident
a mind made of neurons

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 3, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axis	value
book	minerals
symmetry	concentric
organization	nested
silhouette	columnar
scale	hand
proportion	compressed latent
growth	gnomonic
articulation	tethered
openness	lattice
skeleton	woody latent
locomotion	unmarked latent
pattern	labyrinth latent
coloration	disruptive latent
substance	coral
surface	ribbed
palette	oxblood
luminosity	points
transparency	clouded latent
gesture	emits
unity	unmarked latent
modality	contingent latent
causation	material latent
determinacy	unmarked latent
fusion	built of
anomaly	unfinished
graft	stitches
technique	silverpoint
viewpoint	cutaway
value	high key latent
balance	grounded latent
density	graded detail
rhythm	clustered latent
saturation	unmarked latent
appendages	armour plates, tendrils
anchor (body)	a coccolithophore, a sphere armoured with overlapping disc plates
anchor (detail)	a brain coral, a dome covered in meandering ridges

Sources

Philip W. Anderson, More Is Different (Science, 1972)
John Holland, Emergence: From Chaos to Order (1998)
Craig Reynolds, Flocks, herds and schools: a distributed behavioral model (1987)
Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos (1984)
Jaegwon Kim, Making Sense of Emergence (Philosophical Studies, 1999)

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