The emergent universe

The breathtaking quality of emergence lies in its broad applicability, from ants to people, and from electrons to galaxies. We assume that we can sing and dance together because we are intelligent and coordinate our behavior, and so it is surprising to see the coordinated chirping of crickets, and shocking to discover that the same principles apply to mindless things such as water molecules arranging themselves in a crystalline structure to form ice. When you get enough things together, and they interact in just the right way, they suddenly shift to coherent behavior. Emergent principles may govern the smallest units of matter, as in electrons humming together within a superconductor, to the largest, as when entire galaxies clump into regular patterns. Scientists across multiple fields have found that such systems don't require a central ringleader directing the way – their self-organization is inevitable, due to the local interactions of nearest neighbors.

Emergence represents a revolutionary paradigm shift away from reductionism (the understanding of the world through understanding the component parts. Scientists working within the revolutionary paradigm of emergence study the organizing principles causing collective behavior across many disciplines.

The EUP is focusing on the following types of emergent systems; the collection of these systems is what we call the Emergent Universe.