It is interesting for us to consider emergence when it applies to symbols – this is because the ability to use symbols to convey meaning is unique to humans.
In the previous post I used the example of a song to describe emergence. I stated that a song is far more than words, notes and beats written on a page. And these, of course, are symbols.
Still on the music theme, we can imagine a collection of shapes, such as horizontal lines in parallel, vertical thick lines, vertical thin lines, vertical double lines, a line and a dot, squiggles, triangles, circles, dashes, teardrops, and various others. We then rearrange these into symbols, put them in different order and sequence, extend them into longer musical sentences so that they mean something to those who have learned to read them, and so on and so on with more and more complications until we have a symphony.
It is human interaction that transforms the shapes, all of which are found naturally in nature, into the symphony. Reducing the symphony into a random collection of shapes would remove the meaning of the overall.
The same can be said for poetry, prose (the written word), art, architecture, engineering/science – virtually everything man-made.
I invite you to have a look at the images on this website by the Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitoaka. These are optical illusions. Here, emergence is evident. When we look at the images they appear to be moving, but when we fix our eyes on one point in any of the images, the apparent movement stops. Actually, in reality, nothing is moving! The lines and dots in the images are arranged in a particular way and our eyes (or our brains) are fooled accordingly.
In respect of the written word, I don’t have anything against self-help books that offer us advice on different aspects of living – in fact, some are very helpful – but sometimes I get more out of a novel or film that is reflective, or contains indirect or implicit messages.
This may facilitate emergence, and/or allow something to unfold that may surprise, or reveal something unexpected. A story, like a song or a poem, has emergent properties – because we all interpret it through our own subjective experience.
And in Christianity, the New Testament, which gives billions throughout the world a blueprint for living is full of symbolism. It is written in such a way that suggests emergence is very important to humans. We interpret the messages, parables and little stories subjectively. As I have stated elsewhere, sometimes what has emerged has not been advantageous to much of humanity – but that is more due to our tendency to be ambivalent than it is to the messages themselves.
In the world of business we often hear of a merger between two companies to improve their competitiveness and get one up over their rivals. The word merger, of course, is related to emergence, and very often the companies will find that joining together will bring something new that might have unintended consequences – for better or worse!