Studies into abstract properties of individuals. II. Analysis for emergence in populations, species, and a species-pair

Populations, species, and a species-pair were analyzed for emergence, the inability of lower hierarchical levels to specify the properties of higher levels. It was detected in three of four populations, both species and the species-pair. The almost ubiquitous nature of emergence implies it is a property of organized systems. As such, emergence cannot be used to argue for a special ontological individual-like status for species. The degree of emergence, the difference between lower and higher hierarchical levels, was greatest for the species-pair followed, in sequence, by the individuals (the results from a previous study), the single species, and the populations. This sequence can also be viewed as one of decreasing complexity and, if individual plants are excluded, evolutionary diversification. The degree of emergence in individual plants likely results from variation in a highly constrained system, one more constrained than a population or species because of the physical boundary (collective cell membranes) of a plant. Constraint in groups of individual plants is the result of a unique history. A possible cause and effect relationship linking ontogeny and phylogeny is variation and constraint, the cause, and irreversible change, the effect. Variation and constraint may, in turn, be the effect of an entropic informational increase and self-organization.