Emergent Properties

The interdisciplinarian should ask whether there are emergent properties to be addressed and that are amenable to investigation in the system of causal links being investigated. An emergent property is a characteristic of a system of relationships that cannot be understood as a direct result of any set of causal relationships (as consciousness is thought to be an emergent property of certain advanced organisms). The research process pursued in Szostak (2009) and in his chapter on economic growth in Allen Repko, William H. Newell and Rick Szostak, Case Studies in Interdisciplinary research, has such a step. And the Keestra chapter discusses how to map in the face of emergent properties. But there is as yet little precise guidance in the literature on how to study emergent properties.