Emergence is a powerful phenomenon in which individual components of a system interact to create higher-level, emergent behaviors that are significantly more complex than the behaviors of the individual components. Emergence allows for an ability to self-organize and self-stabilize without the need for any external input or manipulation, but instead arising out of the interactions between the individual components themselves. The emergent behavior can be difficult to predict or explain, yet can have a profound and far-reaching impact on the system as a whole.

See also: agent-based modeling, evolutionary computing, self-organization, complex system