Emergence as a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Scientific and Technological Progress

The global science, technology and innovation (STI) system is characterized by some researchers as a complex adaptive system (e.g. Heimricks, 2009). Scientific and technological progress entails both evolutionary and revolutionary change, with a high degree of non-linearity and unpredictability. In the terms of complexity science, this progress is emergentit defies a reductionist approach to characterizing the phenomenon. We discuss the properties associated with emergent behavior (Goldstein, 1999; Deguet et al., 2002), and apply them to an integrative framework for describing activities in scientific research and technological development. We further elaborate on this framework to suggest the developments and events in the global STI system which may be hallmarks of technical emergence, defined as the set of properties and phenomena observed in the development of a concept with potential scientific and technological significance. The conceptual framework provides a useful tool for focusing further research on specific dynamics of scientific and technological activity.