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stuff about higher level chaos/complexity stuff

sn't it the case that the source that generates these higher-level pattern is a rule which we don't see but understand? The visual pattern is just a map of the possibilities entailed in that rule. If so, the unity and beauty that we discover in emergent patterns is inchoate in the rule that determines them. And since that rule is not itself visible, the emergent pattern is a kind of tangible/visible "dance" by that which is intangible.

I am tempted to say that emergence, inasmuch as it is a beautiful pattern, is in the eye of the beholder. But the beholder is taken by the beauty of that pattern only because the mind's eye is able to recognize the source of the pattern's unity.

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