Surprise: Emergence might also require a lens (and heart) that is open to Surprise. A colleague of ours had the unique opportunity to attend a session led by Michael Polanyi, the Noble-winning biologist, who was speaking of the false divide between the humanities and science. Polanyi mentioned that all significant learning is attended by surprise.
We are surprised when water emerges from the combination of two parts of hydrogen to one part of oxygen. Those hanging around early years in the formation of our planet would have been surprised to find that a bunch of chemicals and some light produces a living being. (We of course would have been surprised to find someone hanging out in this hostile environment in which there were not yet any sentient beings).
One of the attendees at Polanyi’s seminar spoke up as Polanyi was describing how scientists get surprised by major new findings in their field. The attendee indicating that this sense of surprise and even awe seemed like the Hebrew experience of encountering Yahweh. Polanyi was startled (surprised/). He had never thought of this comparison. Though he grew up in a Jewish culture (and had to escape Hungary in part because of this heritage), Polanyi had abandoned this heritage many years before leading this seminar. Suddenly Yahweh reappears and offers new insight about surprise and emergence (in this case the new insight-generating merger of Polanyi’s scientific background with his Jewish background).
Dither: There is another important characteristic of emergence that is often not considered. An insight regarding this characteristic comes from another seminar that was led by a noted scientist. In this case it was Karl Pribram, a major neuroscience researcher and theoretician from Stanford University. He was speaking about the way our nervous system operates like a holograph (Hampden-Turner, 1981, pp. 94-97). As a side note, Pribram talked about something he called a “dither.” This is the vibration that tends to occur in an individual neural cell before it fires. Pribram suggested that this same “dither” effect might operate in any system just before it undertakes a major shift in state (its own “firing”).
Pribram’s speculation might readily be applied to the dynamics of any emergence. We might expect to see some “dithering” just before the new emergent form is “born.” There would be the “birth pains” represented in vacillation of the pre-emergent forms. Properties would change rapidly in character and form. State of affairs would swing back and form—from hot to cold, belligerent to peaceful, orderly to chaotic. Entities would move rapidly from side to side.
We would witness the reign of Volatility–the first (V) condition of VUCA-Plus. Under such conditions, we must be nimble of cognitive foot—we must find an adjustable lens. This lens must be altered in scope and focus based on rapidly changing conditions. Or we might have to be patient and wait for the new form to emerge and then assist with the raising of this new child—our lens becomes one of nurturance and care (Bergquist and Quehl, 2019).
