The detection of intermediate-level emergent structures and patterns

Artificial life is largely concerned with systems that exhibit different emergent phenomena; yet, the identification of emergent structures is frequently a difficult challenge. In this paper we introduced a system to identify candidate emergent mesolevel dynamical structures in dynamical networks. This method is based on an extension of a measure introduced for detecting clusters in biological neural networks; its main novelty in comparison to previous application of similar measures is that we used it to consider truly dynamical networks, and not only fluctuations around stable asymptotic states. The identified structures are clusters of elements that behave in a coherent and coordinated way and that loosely interact with the remainder of the system. We have evidence that our approach is able to identify these “emerging things” in some artificial network models and in more complex data coming from catalytic reaction networks and biological gene regulatory systems (A.thaliana). We think that this system could suggest interesting new ways in dealing with artificial and biological systems.