ABSTRACT
The often repeated adage “the whole is more than the sum of the parts” captures the essential nature of emergence. In the case of a system such as an aircraft, the individual component parts are relatively stable over time and their interrelationships are reasonably understood. As a result, engineers have some ability, relative to the complexity of the system, to understand, predict and design for emergent behavior. Characterizing emergence behavior for system of systems is more challenging.
