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Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena
Connecting the science of emergence across the Netherlands and beyond
The Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena (DIEP) is an interdisciplinary research centre across fundamental sciences with the purpose of furthering the understanding of emergent phenomena. It aims at how emergence provides a unifying link across sciences, starting from the very beginning of how space, time and the universe emerged, all the way to how all forms of matter arise from an underlying collection of building blocks, and how complex biological, social, ecological and economic systems share similar features. Emergent phenomena are extremely common in nature and their manifestation is based on the same underlying principles across sciences. Using analytic, numerical, experimental and philosophical methods available from quantum gravity, mathematics, physics, computer science, logic, language, computation, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, chemistry, ecology, astronomy, sociology, psychology, economics, and philosophy of science, DIEP takes a transdisciplinary approach in tackling emergent behaviour. Integrated in the National Science Agenda (route 2) with various clusters around the Netherlands, DIEP gathers research groups and scientists across the Netherlands and beyond and establish itself as a beacon for a new understanding of nature and emergence.
New project: Emergence At All Scales
What are the building blocks of space, time and matter? Can we understand the mind-boggling variation in properties emerging when Lego is played with billions of fundamental particles, atoms, molecules and little chunks of materials? These questions are amongst the deepest, and the scientists asking them do research into emergence.
‘Emergence at all Scales’ is one of nine consortia that have received funding for research within the Research on Routes by Consortia (ORC) programme line of the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA). In these projects, researchers work together with knowledge partners and civil society organisations. This ensures a combination of many different areas of expertise.
The newly formed consortium wants to understand emergence at all scales: from the terribly tiny to the cosmologically colossal. The goal is the discovery of the general laws of emergence, written in the language of mathematics. In this journey spanning sixty-orders of magnitude, the scientists are joined by citizen-scientists, artists, school-kids, and cool cocktail-mixologists.
What is the science of emergence?
The universe is composed of microscopic building blocks and the world we see around us is the result of a combination of millions of billions of billions of those blocks. When we walk through the streets of our cities, we do not see these microscopic elements of the universe but instead cars and buses smoothly driving pass by us. If we would carry our microscopes and particle accelerators with us, we would be able to see some part of that microscopic world but we usually carry nothing more than a pair of Ray-Ban glasses. The world we see with our own eyes is governed by laws that originated from a microscopic world but the laws that govern that microscopic world are completely different. The world we experience is said to have emerged from a world that only microscopes can reach. All the smooth experiences of wind blowing, music, sound or touch are the result of these emergent laws.
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