Abstract

We begin by describing the importance of emergence in industry and the need, in certain situations, to move away from a reduction mind-set to a more holist approach. We define the term emergence in context of self-organizing systems, autopoiesis and chaotic systems. We then examine a field that is commonly used to explore emergence and self-organization, namely agent and multi-agent systems. After an overview of this field, we highlight the most appropriate aspects of agent research used in aiding the understanding of emergence. We conclude with an example of our recent research where we measure agent emergent performance and flexibility and relate it to the make-up of the agent organization. © 2005 IEEE.