While reading an article on Constructivism, an approach to social science, I found this footnote on emergence, which interested me...
"Emergence, an increasingly important concept in physics, meant that physical and biological systems are partly indeterminate (even though they respond to laws); accordingly, once they cross a threshold of complexity, they can spontaneously organize themsleves into more complex, self-sustaining and self-reproducing structures. 'Weather is an emergent property; take your water vapour out over the Gulf of Mexico and let it interact with sunlight and wind, and it can organize itself into an emergent structure known as a hurricane. Life is an emergent property, the product of DNA molecules and protein molecules and myriad other kinds of molecules, all obeying the laws of chemistry' (Waldrop, 1992:82; see also Kauffman, 1995:24*). In the social world I take emergence to mean that 'in contrast to the past which is closed, as it were, the future is still open to influence; it is not yet completely determined' (Popper, 1982a:56, 130*). In other words, the social world is emergent because we humans can reflectively and ofter suprisingly affect it with formulated human knowledge. Metaphorically speaking, then, human knowledge can produce instabilities that generate the propensity for self-organization."
(Emanueal Adler (1997) "Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics"
European Journal of International Relations 3:3)
I think it's the idea of complexity and the effect that people's ideas have on what would otherwise be a fairly straightforward social development. Does this have any relationship to the emergence of churches?
*Not referneced in full for reasons of brevity but I can if you like
They say, "You may like to give a farmyard in your own name, or perhaps you could encourage your church, club or workplace to raise £2,000 that will bring a secure future to upto 250 people currently trapped in poverty. Your symbolic Christmas farmyard will be distributed over all the countries in Africa where Send a Cow works."
