In this short video the neuroscientist Chris Fields explains the scientific concept of emergence. He addresses some challenges that it presents to the scientific community and touches on the larger questions that it raises.
Chris Fields uses concepts and tools from physics, information theory, evolutionary and developmental biology, and cognitive neuroscience in an attempt to understand how, and to what extent, one part of the world can be aware of another part of the world. Underlying this question is that of how observers draw boundaries around the systems being observed, including themselves. This later question raises, in turn, questions concerning the nature and awareness of time, memory and identity through time. Answers to these questions, however tentative, suggest approaches to open problems in cosmology, developmental biology, and the etiology of developmental disorders such as autism.
