what is an emergent property

Emergent property refers to a property or behavior of a complex system that arises from the interactions of its parts, but is not present in any of the individual parts on their own. Emergent properties are critical attributes of biological systems, as understanding the individual parts alone is insufficient to understand or predict system behavior. There are two types of emergent properties: weak and strong. Weak emergentists deny that emergents have any fundamentally new powers, while strong emergentists take emergents to introduce fundamentally novel causal powers that their lower-level physical bases do not have. Examples of emergent properties include human consciousness, ant colonies, and cities. Emergent properties are important in philosophy, systems theory, science, and art.