Emergence

Emergence designates the arising of new qualities that are not reducible to the properties of the parts. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. Examples: consciousness from neurons, life from molecules, water from H₂O. In Hegel: the qualitative leap at the limits of measure is emergence. Quantitative change leads to a qualitative leap (nodal line of relations of measure). Emergence is neither mystical (as if something arose from nothing) nor reductionist (as if the new quality already lay in the parts). It is dialectical: the new quality arises from the self-transcendence of the old at its limit of measure.