ABSTRACT
The concepts themselves, emergent properties and emergence, have their origin in the 19th century or possibly even earlier, finding the earliest roots back in Kantian philosophy. Throughout this century, several scientists have addressed the concept from a more philosophical point of view (Garnett, 1942, Henle, 1942), resulting in the appearance of different explanations o f the concept. The definitions given often have a heuristic character. They have, in general, been referring to subjective arguments, such as surprise, unexpectancy, thus being clearly observer dependent in their definition. This has strongly influenced the present use and approaches taken to analyse the concepts within different scientific areas.
