“Emergent systems are nonlinear, meaning they do not arise through chains of causation. They are instead networks shaped by teh back and forth influences of mutual causation. Each node in such a network influences and is influenced by other nodes through positive and negative feedback signals that, taken together, generate the order as a whole. The order is a kind of pattern in relationships rather than an arrangement of objects, which themselves might be individually mobile and transient. Objects come and go; the pattern remains.”