Emergence Calculus

How can we construct a new level of organization and establish what it adds?

Emergence can be an engineering task: construct a new layer of organization, establish the laws it supports and check how it relates to the system it is built from. Emergence Calculus introduces Six Birds Theory as a framework for this work. It gives criteria for engineering and auditing strict theory extensions: new lawful layers containing distinctions that cannot be recovered from the starting description.

The course begins with examples whose rules you can check on paper. From there it develops the tools to build descriptions with laws of their own, extend what a system can do and arrange its continued operation. Worked constructions connect memory, prediction, learning, shared knowledge and collective organization. Readers build, test and compare designs, tracking the information, actions and resources each one requires. Diagrams, exercises and explanatory answers let readers carry out the reasoning themselves.

Who it is for

Scientists, philosophers and curious readers in any discipline. The main route builds understanding through words, tables and diagrams and assumes no prior knowledge of Six Birds Theory, algebra or programming. Optional mathematics takes the same ideas further.

The series

Beginning with an introductory course and continuing through specialist textbooks, the Emergence Calculus series develops Six Birds Theory as a practical framework for constructing and auditing new layers of description, capability and organization. This is the introductory course.