Emergence
Emergence, the process of coming into being, is a basic principle of Systems Science and is a natural part of our constantly changing world. One example of emergence is our higher brain, the cerebral cortex, which is much more developed in humans compared to all other animals. I wrote about the opportunity to utilize the higher brain to make kindness our default setting in last week’s blog post.
Like the emergence of a higher brain in our bodies, many new types of microbes have emerged in our world. It’s been estimated that over 300 new microbes have emerged in the past 80 years, many due to resistance to antibiotics. Every one of these organisms has the potential to contribute to harm, while some may live symbiotically or may even be beneficial for a human being. This includes the COVID-19 virus. The thinking that there are good microbes that don’t contribute to harm and bad pathogens that only cause harm is not reality. For many decades, researchers have found that the result of an interaction between a human and a microbe depends on many factors between that person, the microbe and other microbes, and other local environmental factors.
In Reductionist Science, we’d like to believe that a microbe is good or bad. If it is a bad microbe, then we need to find a way to eliminate it. That is what we’re trying to do with the COVID-19 virus: develop a vaccine that will allow our own immune system to fight off the virus or develop an anti-viral treatment that will eliminate the virus (or at least eliminate the symptoms resulting from the virus).
The real world is not so simple.
Reductionist Science applies to a world that does not exist – a static, mechanical world. Our real biologic world is constantly changing, and emergence is a natural result of the interactions between organisms in an ever-changing world. When something new or different occurs, the reductionist thinking treats it as a dire emergency out of fear: fear of change, fear of harm or death, fear of the unknown and uncertainty. The Systems Science response is with curiosity and the opportunity to learn. “Why did this new thing happen? What can we learn from it? How can we apply this new knowledge to improve our world?”
Take COVID-19 for example. When it was first recognized, the response was fear and a lack of transparency. The doctor to first speak out in China, Li Wenliang, who tried to be transparent about the virus, was punished by authorities for sharing his concerns with colleagues and later died from COVID-19. As it spread around the world, many responded with fear and assigned blame. If we had learning systems in place in each local clinical environment, we could have learned so much about how the virus was impacting different subpopulations and what types of prevention and treatments worked best, didn’t work, or were harmful in each subpopulation. But we don’t have that type of data and analytics infrastructure in place in healthcare.
By applying Systems Science principles, in addition to learning about the new virus itself, we might also question how the virus emerged. Did it have something to do with our domestication of animals and how we produce meat? I don’t know. Could it have been related to any research into infectious diseases? I don’t know that either. But if we were able to apply a data and analytics infrastructure to answer some of these questions, we should use that information to learn and improve our world, not to shame, place blame or ridicule a person or organization.
It’s highly likely that the COVID-19 virus was an unintended consequence of a complex interaction between many factors. This pandemic should be an opportunity to learn and adapt, using our higher brain and the Systems Science principles I’ve described. We’ll never be able to stop emergence; we might as well figure out how to learn from it.