THE CORE PROBLEM OF EMERGENCE

Emergent phenomena are ubiquitous in nature and cover all length scales. Laboratories at FNWI and around the world detect it on a daily basis: from novel phases of matter in physics, through pattern formation in molecular structures in chemistry to new collective behaviour in insects. A large body of theoretical investigations continuously tackles emergence at various levels of abstraction: emergence of space, time and matter; emergent properties in complex, stochastic, active or living systems; emergent structures in mathematical models, deep learning and neural networks; emergent group behaviour in the form of various processes of evolution, adaptation, learning, cooperation and intelligence. However, despite multiple efforts from various perspectives, the question

Is there a fundamental theory of Emergent behaviour?

still awaits an answer. Answering this question is as daunting as understanding the whole of science since its range of applicability ranges from the big bang to the large-scale structure of the universe, from quantum physics to chemical reactions or from genetic microevolution to macroevolution at the level of species. FAEME's approach is to dissect this fundamental challenge into the answers to the following three interconnected challenges applicable to any given emergent phenomena

What is the microscopic theory underlying a given emergent phenomena?

What is the macroscopic theory describing the observed collective behaviour?

How are these two levels of reality (microscopic and macroscopic) related?

FAEME aims at tackling these major challenges by applying various methodologies and by using experimental data to include as many universality classes of emergent phenomena as possible. In other words, FAEME aims at uncovering general principles underlying the theory of emergent phenomena rooted in a large and growing collection of specific examples. 

Concretely, FAEME will focus on addressing important questions such as:

• Can we detect, infer, characterise and measure emergent properties in a model independent way?

• Under what conditions can we predict what macroscopic phenomena will emerge from an underlying microscopic theory?

• What are the simplest complex systems which emulate living/intelligent systems and are able to demonstrate emergent cooperative or learning dynamics?