ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Emergentism

Hey there, little one! Have you ever seen ants building their homes and working together in a group? Well, emergentism is something similar to this idea of working together and creating something bigger than the individual parts.

In science, emergentism suggests that complex things can come from simpler things working together in a system. It is like when you build a house of blocks. Each block is important and adds to the structure of the house, and when you put them all together, you get a complete house that is greater than each block on its own.

In the same way, emergentism says that complex things in nature, like animals or ecosystems, can emerge from simpler parts working together in a system. For example, your mom's garden is made up of different flowers, plants, and insects that work together to create a mini ecosystem. Each element is important in the garden, but when everything comes together, it creates something much bigger and more complex than each individual plant or insect.

So, emergentism is like teamwork in nature. Many individual parts work together to create something bigger and more complex, and this is how we get ecosystems, societies of animals, and other complex systems that we see in the world around us.