Detecting emergence in engineered systems: A literature review and synthesis approach

Abstract

Modern product development often generates systems of high complexity that are prone to emergent behavior. The industry has a need to establish better practices to detect inherent emergent behavior when engineering such systems. Philosophers and researchers have debated emergence throughout history, tracing to the time of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) and current literature has both philosophical and practical examples of emergence in modern systems. In this review paper, we investigate the phenomenon of emergent behavior in engineered systems. Our aim is to describe emergence in engineered systems and propose methods to detect it, based on literature. Emergence is in general explained as dynamic behavior seen at macro level that cannot be traced back to the micro level. Emergence can be known or unknown in combination with positive or negative. We find that best practices to engineer complicated systems should contain a sensible suite of traditional approaches and methods, while best practices to engineer complex systems need extensions to this considering a new paradigm using incentives to guide system behavior rather than testing it up‐front.