Emergence, some say, is merely a philosophical concept, unfit for scientific consumption. Or, others predict, when subjected to empirical testing it will turn out to be nothing more than shorthand for a whole batch of discrete phenomena involving novelty, which is, if you will, nothing novel. Perhaps science can study emergences, the critics continue, but not emergence as such.

It's too soon to tell. But certainly there is a place for those, such as the scientist to whom this volume is dedicated, who attempt to look ahead, trying to gauge what are Nature's broadest patterns and hence where present scientific resources can best be invested. John Archibald Wheeler formulated an important motif of emergence in 1989:

Wheeler summarized his idea – the observer–participant who is both the result of an evolutionary process and, in some sense, the cause of his own emergence – in two ways: in the famous sketch given in Fig. 26.1 and in the maxim “It from bit.” In the attempt to summarize this chapter's thesis with an equal economy of words I offer the corresponding maxim, “Us from it.”