Intelligence as an emergent behavior: or, the songs of Eden

Sometimes a system with many simple components will exhibit a behavior of the whole that seems more organised than the behavior of the individual parts. Consider the intricate structure of a snowflake. Symmetric shapes within the crystals of ice repeat in threes and sixes, with patterns recurring from place to place and within themselves at different scales. The shapes formed by the ice are consequences of the local rules of interaction that govern the molecules of water, although the connection between the shapes and the rules is far from obvious. After all, these are the same rules of interaction that cause water to suddenly turn to steam at its boiling point and cause whirlpools to form in a stream. The rules that govern the forces between water molecules seem much simpler than crystals or whirlpools or boiling points, yet all of these complex phenomena are somehow consequences of those rules. Such phenomena are called emergent behaviors of the system.