Emergence

 A single ant is a stupid insect, it has very little of a brain, and no plan or a will and yet when a lot of them come together they create the best of the colonies and societies. Together they are so cohesive and efficient that it is almost unbelievable how they achieve it. So how it is possible that a bunch of stupid insects do such smart things when they are together?

This phenomenon is called emergence and is one of the mysterious things of the universe. In short it means how small things form bigger things that develop a different set of properties than the sum of their smaller parts. It is about the change of behavior during transition from simple to complex things and this feature can be found everywhere.

Let’s take the example of wetness which is one of the properties of water. But when we break it down to its molecules then we find that its molecules as an individual have nothing to do with wetness. A wet fabric is wet but when we zoom enough then there is no wetness. At that level they are just molecules sitting in between the fabric of the cloth. So wetness is a property that is created when many molecules are combined to form water. Like this example many things interact under certain circumstances to combine and form something which is beyond them.

So more is different. Smaller things combine to form a new thing and they again combine to form yet newer form of things and properties. And this process continues. Molecules of water> water>snow>ice>blizzard. Atoms form into molecules, molecules form into proteins and they again make cells and again organs and again individuals and again societies. How do ants form colonies? They follow a rule set that produces order in chaos.

Let’s see how ant colony works. Suppose ant colony should consist of 25 percent each of workers, gatherers, soldiers and caretakers. The job of a particular ant is known by the chemical it releases. A worker ant will release a chemical saying that it is a worker ant. When it meets other ants they communicate through the chemicals sharing information about their job. When a worker ant will meet a gatherer ant they will share their job with others through chemicals. Suppose an anteater eats up most of the gatherer ants. This means the balance is disturbed and they will need to switch jobs to restore the balance. So this information is to be shared to thousands of other ants. How do they tell others- they don’t. They will keep meeting other ants but they will meet very few of the gatherer ants. When food becomes scarce and reaches a critical point they themselves switch job until the initial balance is restored. The act of one ant meeting the other is random but the set of rules work so elegantly that the various operations of the ant colony are always at the optimal level. A single stupid ant when in a group has a different level of outcome.

Now if we go to a still smaller level we will see that millions and billions of molecules interact with each other to maintain the bigger structure. All the dead parts like atom, molecule, and proteins combine to form the smallest unit of a living cell. These cells combine and cooperate with each other, they specialize in a particular work and in this way by combing those cells with a preset rules large organisms are formed. Our body parts are incredibly complicated but they are made up by combining those single cells which has nothing to do with the final product. These individual cells combine to form us the final product that eats, digests, and do whatever we do.

How do the individual cells know what they are supposed to do? Take the example of the pacemaker cells in the heart, billions of these cells work in complete synchronization to form a single heart beat. One cell interacts with the other and decides what to do. This way all the cells working on the same task will interact and act on the collective feedback. There is no master cell that is organizing things but just single cells communicating with each other and deciding on the course of action. All these and still there is a confusion as to are these single cells individually alive?

Then comes the most important part of us, the one that questions what is going around us. Is our consciousness also a part of the functions of the cells of the brains?

Just as colonies emerge from ants, human also form societies and nations which functions differently from the individual. What is nation – is it the sum total of its population or institutions or its flag. Or is it the physical things like the villages and cities, the territory it controls? All these things are fluid; population is changing and getting replaced, institutions are changing, the leaders are changing, the cities are changing, the demography is changing and the borders are changing with time. A nation is just like the ant colony which as a cohesive unit interacts with the world. But a nation is existing because a lot of its basic unit the humans are interacting with each other within a set of common rules. We are as a group creating something which is completely different from the stupid ape from which we came. We don’t know why this happens but it seems to be the fundamental property of the universe.