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The notions of emergence and emergent properties have a long history in science, and have recently regained popularity in systems science fuelled largely by the growth of computer simulation as an exploratory and investigative tool. Unfortunately, the notions and terms are not especially well defined: ideas of evolution, self-organization, collective ('systemic') properties and cooperative behaviour are all involved to a greater or lesser extent. It is often claimed that emergent properties arise at a particular level of system description by virtue of the interaction of relatively simple lower-level components- between themselves and with the environment- but cannot be explained at this lower level. Yet there are obvious scientific and philosophical problems with a definition based on an inability to explain observable effects in particular terms. This editorial outlines the history of emergence as a scientific concept, and reviews attempts to refine and qualify the term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generation of complex entities with advantageous behaviours beyond our manual design capability requires long-term incremental evolution with continuing emergence. In this paper, we argue that artificial selection models, such as traditional genetic algorithms, are fundamentally inadequate for this goal. Existing natural selection systems are evaluated, revealing both significant achievements and pitfalls. Thus, some requirements for the perpetuation of evolutionary emergence are established. An (artificial) environment containing simple virtual autonomous organisms with neural controllers has been created to satisfy these requirements and to aid in the development of an accompanying theory of evolutionary emergence. Resulting behaviours are reported alongside their neural correlates. In a particular example, the collective behaviour of one species provides a selective force which is overcome by another species, demonstrating the incremental evolutionary emergence of advantageous behaviours via naturally arising coevolution. While the results fall short of the ultimate goal, experience with the system has provided some useful lessons for the perpetuation of emergence towards increasingly complex advantageous behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]