Volume 9, Number 1, p.p. 5–9
Emergent properties in biological systems as a result of competition between internal and external dynamics
B. Laforge
Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Energies, UMR 7585, CNRS/IN2P3, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris cedex 05, France
In any industrial workshop, engineers have understood that the reproducible realization of an industrial product requires a well established process, which is a suite of actions applied to the initial raw materials being transformed and assembled into the final object. This fact is particularly enlightening regarding how the “emergent” final product arises in this process. Such an example reveals at least two dynamics involved in the fabrication process: the first is the intrinsic dynamics of the raw material whereas the second appears to be the dynamics of operations carried out on that material. Those operations can always be seen as a set of constraints imposed on the system as it undergoes its transformation. In this article I investigate how the interplay between these two dynamics is of valuable interest to understand the so-called phenomenon of “emergence” in biological systems.
Keywords:
cooperation, multi-agent systems, self-organization