Anthony Cao
Emergence is an amazing phenomenon. Things happen because thing follow simple rules. The idea is
incredibly simple yet the amazing structures and designs that come out of emergence are so chaotic, so
complex. The simple example is a flock of birds where the complex example is life itself. The depth of
Emergence is vast. Atoms have simple rules fill your valance shell or remove any excessive electrons.
Those simple rules make vast and large complex molecules. Cells follow rules given to them by the DNA
and those roles make up organs. This emergence happens at all level of existence, from quarks to
economies. The idea that nature follows this structure at levels is convenient. Now if take definitions at
face value fractals have “. . . self-similar patterns. Fractals may be exactly the same at every scale” if this
is the case then nature itself is a fractal. The pattern of emergence is present at all levels of nature. This
is only if we take definitions at face value and for the most part chaotic systems are not every easy to
define.
Music is an emergent phenomenon. Gardner talks about making means of making Bach music by
certain notes having different chances of other notes following them. This is simple rule and from it
emerges music. White noise is random and a metronome is too orderly. Music exists between those
two worlds. When a jazz musician begins a free style solo the musician chooses notes at “random”. The
random notes on the other hand are not perfectly random since the musician has to maintain key
signature and tempo. Those notes he plays hover around the scale of the key as if the scale is an
attractor. If one looks at the musical scale it is a pattern 1101110111011, where ones are whole steps
between notes and zeros are half steps. The pattern is similar in all key signatures. The notes go up and
down in an almost chaotic pattern. If the pattern wasn’t there and it was random the scale would be a
random distribution and not palindromic. If the pattern was too orderly it would be only ones or zeros.
This pattern of semi order works and when the free style begins it is this pattern that act as an attractor
for the note he is playing. If the musician left the scale too much and started playing random notes the
music would dissolve into white noise. The letters in music have a similar not perfect order like the
scales. Certain notes have a sharp and a flat between them and the next letter note. If one takes all the
musical letter notes and places them around a circle with their sharps and flats separating them and
then draw lines from letter to letter on gets this (image from Wikipedia).
Such an odd pattern again shows itself. So if one combine the pattern of notes and the pattern of scales
music emergences. The idea that music is chaotic seems to hold up in the fact that it is not random and
has a distinct element to it that guides it.
If somebody put one thousand people in a city in the exact same spot and gave them all maps, telling
them they had to get across town what would happen? The horde of people would all start walking in
the general direction of the location in a wave like manner then the way will slow become more of a
line. People will follow the path that others have laid. This is a Group emergent behavior that is mirrored
in the performance of music by groups of musicians. When a group of musicians begins playing music
together it is exactly like the horde of people in a town. They all start playing at similar time with similar
intonation and similar volume. The initial elements of the song sound like a wave front nothing is quite
together but as the musicians listen to each other the wave front begins to come together and the wave
begins to look or sounds like the line. The collective mind of the musicians will cause the music to blend.
Musicians despite how many people view them are a bottom up structure. The closest thing to leader in
a music group is the pipe organ since all instruments are supposed to blend into it. But the pipe organ
doesn’t set the tempo or volume so it cannot the leader of the group. The elements of a music group
are similar to the elements in nature
Anthony you did a great job bringing together really interesting ways of thinking about the course
content—well done! The content part is an A
The writing needs work; your sentences are too disjointed. Here is an example of how to fix that:
Music is an emergent phenomenon. Gardner talks about making means of making Bach music by
certain notes having different chances of other notes following them. This is simple rule and from it
emerges music. White noise is random and a metronome is too orderly. Music exists between those
two worlds. When a jazz musician begins a free style solo the musician chooses notes at “random”.
That could be written better by joining the sentences:
Music is an emergent phenomenon. Gardner provides one way to see the emergent nature of music in
his description of making Bach-like compositions by probability rules: each note having a different
chance of other notes following them. This simple set of rules allows a kind of self-generating sequence
of musical notes. Another way to think about music as an emergent phenomenon is to consider the
range of sound probabilities. White noise is random, and a metronome is too orderly. Music exists
between those two worlds. We can see this mix of order and disorder in the case of jazz. When a jazz
musician begins a free style solo the musician chooses notes at “random”….
Overall the paper grade is an B+.
RE