Phenomenon of Emergence

An ant is pretty stupid. It doesn't have much of a brain, no will, no plan, and yet, many ants together are smart. An ant colony can construct complex structures. Some colonies keep farms of fungi, others take care of cattle. They can wage war or defend themselves. How is this possible? How can a bunch of stupid things do smart things together? This phenomenon is called emergence, and it's one of the most fascinating and mysterious features of our universe. In a nutshell, it describes small things forming bigger things that have different properties than the sum of their parts. Emergence is complexity arising from simplicity, and emergence is everywhere. Water has vastly different properties to the molecules that make it up, like the concept of wetness. Take wet fabric, If you zoom in far enough, there is no wetness. There are just molecules sitting in the spaces between the atoms of the cloth. Wetness is an emerging property of water. Something new only created by a lot of individual interactions between water molecules. And this is sort of it. Many things interact under a certain set of rules, creating something above and beyond themselves.