Emergence
Through the creative nature of the Divine Fire spontaneous order arises. Extremely ordered patterns grow out of the chaos, such as found in crystals and snowflakes. But both chaos and order in their extremes are dead.
It is in the balance of order and chaos that complexity arises. These complex systems bring the cosmos to life. Even prior to biological life in the strict sense, there is a living motion and dynamic movement or breath - from the Solar system to weather systems, the rise and fall of continents, or the birth and death of stars.
How can simpler forms lead to the more complex? It has now been shown through mathematical and computer models how just a few abstract components with a few simple rules of interaction lead to surprisingly intricate patterns, including the emergence of growth, movement, and reproduction1. This creates a kind of counter to the law of entropy2. Not a fundamental force, but an effective force that pushes upward toward higher and higher orders of complexity3.
Biological life, then, is simply a further extension of this creative force. What we call 'biology' is merely a subset of the same phenomena - certain elements that have the structural capacity for the emergence of much higher levels of complexity. When we apply complex systems models, abiogenesis is no longer a vastly improbable chance happening, but an inevitability4.
Emergence carries through from biology to psychology, sociology, culture, society. All are one in which these nested patterns emerge again and again. The Buddhists have a concept called dependent origination. It means that phenomena, rather than coming into being one linear step at a time, arise together simultaneously, all being the cause and effect of one another.
But the real heart of emergence is not merely the emergence of new complex systems. It is the emergence of whole new properties. These emergent properties arise out of such systems, but they cannot be found in any of their constituents. Their emergence cannot be predicted by any model, other than the playing out of the system itself. They are effectively indeterminate. Such systems are greater than the sum of their parts5. Such emergent properties are not reducible to those parts.
Further, these properties can supervene in the system. They can create a downward causation onto the parts that bring them about. This means that such properties are not merely the reflection of the activity of aggregates, but a causal impetus in their own right. And so, while the Divine Fire is a raging catalyst of conflicting events, it is through emergence that balance and harmony becomes possible.
All of this makes the dynamic systems we see in the universe full of potential. While there is a rational order to the universe, emergence of complex systems and their nonlinear indeterminacy makes this a cosmos of possibility rather than strict determinism, especially when it comes to human beings.
We thus can adopt a concept of naturalistic karma: a notion of cause and effect, specifically where potentialities for human suffering and happiness are concerned. And we can use such models as short-hands to help guide us in shaping conditions wisely. We can understand how causality means that not all things are within our control. But meanwhile we are not held in fatalistic patterns impossible to escape or without possibility of transition, change, growth, forgiveness, or redemption.