what you think can be good examples of emergent system properties ? functional and not functional.?

Answer 1

Wikipedia provides quite a few examples, such as the hydrogen bonds in water which give it surface-tension arising from the shape interactions of the molecules. Also, people folding in poker when the rules don't say they have to.

Another example I came across is from evolution. It stunned me at the time. Inside each cell of the human body is a bit of 'machinery' that reads the letters of the DNA and follows its instructions to create Messenger RNA. This then floats off and tells some other part of the body to create proteins for various purposes. The DNA consists of 4 amino acids called A, G, C and T. The machiny starts at one point in the DNA and reads 3 letters. There are 4 x 4 x 4 combinations, coding for 64 possible proteins. It creates the messenger RNA, then steps along the DNA to read the next lot of 3 letters, until it hits a 'stop code'.

This is so much like a human-designed or god-designed machine that some people think it couldn't have evolved. It must have been created. However, the book gives a pretty convincing step by step explanation of how it evolved from simple molecules forming into cells, evolving into multi-celled creatures and so on.

Evolution is an example of an emergent property. Organisms display behaviours that couldn't have been predicted by looking at the behaviour of their constituent molecules.

I wish I could remember the title of the book. It was called something like 'How Life Works' and was aimed at schoolkids.