Azken Hitzak: Emergentzia. Diziplinarteko ikuspuntu bat

This volume of Revista Internacional de los Estudios Vascos (RIEV), offers a sustained and multidisciplinary exploration of emergence as a key concept for understanding complexity in nature, life, society, and politics. The contributions have been deliberately arranged to form a coherent conceptual trajectory, in which each article prepares the ground for the next, progressively expanding the scope of emergence from fundamental scientific questions to problems of agency, normativity, and collective governance.

The journey begins with the article by Pedro Miguel Echenique, which establishes the scientific and epistemological horizon of the volume. By reflecting on how novel properties arise from material substrates in contemporary physics and complexity science, Echenique frames emergence not only as a persistent challenge to reductionist modes of explanation, but also as an indispensable conceptual tool for making sense of complex systems.

This initial scientific framing naturally raises questions about explanation itself: how can emergent phenomena be rationally described, justified, and understood? These questions are taken up in the contribution by Luis Vega and Luca Fanelli, who shift the discussion from physics to logic and methodology. Their analysis examines the implications of emergence for models of rationality and scientific explanation, showing how non-linear and non-reductive accounts can remain rigorous without reverting to simplification.

From this methodological clarification, the volume evolves to the study of mind, language, and cognition in the article by Román Orús and Juan Uriagereka. Focusing on computational and algebraic approaches to complex systems, they show how structure and organization emerge through interaction and constraint, reinforcing the need for genuinely multi-level explanations that bridge formal models and empirical phenomena.

The move from abstract systems to matter marks a crucial turning point in the volume. This transition is articulated in Sara Barja’s contribution, which brings the discussion of emergence back to condensed matter physics but reframes it in explicitly constructive terms. Through three emblematic case studies - superconductivity, the quantum Hall effect, and moiré materials - she shows that even when microscopic laws are complete, physical systems can operate through higher-level organizing variables such as order parameters, symmetries, and topological invariants. In doing so, Barja deepens the volume’s central argument that understanding complexity requires thinking simultaneously across scales, from atoms to architectures of matter.

Continuing within the domain of physics, the article by Eduard Salvador and Jon Marcaide shifts the focus from condensed matter to the emergence of the structure of the Universe itself. Tracing a narrative from elementary particles to galaxies, they show that cosmic complexity arises from a deep interplay between reductionist physics and emergent organization. Starting from the microphysics of quarks, leptons, and fundamental forces, the authors reconstruct how quantum fluctuations in the early Universe seeded the large-scale cosmic web, giving rise to dark matter halos, primordial nucleosynthesis, the first stars, galaxies, and ultimately supermassive black holes. Their account illustrates that emergence and reductionism are not opposites but complementary: while the laws of the very small constrain everything that follows, the relevant explanations at cosmological scales are couched in terms of collective structures, gravitational instabilities, and processes of self-organization. In this way, Salvador and Marcaide position the Universe itself as a paradigmatic case of emergence across scales, from subatomic interactions to the grand architecture of cosmic structures.

This perspective becomes more concrete and empirically grounded in the article by José Antonio Rodríguez, Asier Fullaondo, Ainhoa Iglesias-Ara, and Ana M. Zubiaga. Moving from the physics of matter to the dynamics of living systems, their contribution brings emergence into the realm of biological organization by examining how genomic novelty translates into organismal complexity. By analyzing gene duplication and the emergence of new genes, the authors offer a detailed account of how evolutionary novelty arises through the interplay of constraint, contingency, and functional diversification, exemplifying emergence at the molecular level.

At this point, the volume explicitly opens onto philosophical reflection. The contribution by Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias takes stock of the preceding biological discussions and reframes them within the long-standing debate between reductionism and emergentism in evolutionary theory. By focusing on multilevel selection and altruism, the article shows why emergentist approaches are not merely optional, but necessary for understanding complex biological and social phenomena.

From biological systems to organized human collectives, the scope of emergence expands further in the article by Sixto Jiménez. His analysis of organizations highlights how collective entities acquire properties irreducible to individual actors, introducing leadership, culture, and coordination as emergent dimensions that structure social life.

This focus on collective organization leads naturally to the global and political scale in the contribution by Iván Urueta and Mikel Mancisidor. Situating emergence within international politics and global governance, the authors analyze how new political patterns arise under conditions of polycrisis, emphasizing the role of narratives, institutions, and ethical leadership in shaping an increasingly complex world order.

The political implications of complexity are further deepened in Daniel Innerarity’s article, which proposes a theory of democracy capable of operating under conditions of uncertainty, interdependence, and distributed intelligence. Drawing on insights from complexity science, Innerarity articulates forms of governance oriented toward learning, adaptation, and indirect steering rather than control.

The volume concludes by returning to a foundational question that resonates with all preceding contributions: how does agency itself emerge? In his closing article, Xabier E. Barandiarán offers a systematic philosophical account of emergence and autonomous agency, tracing agency back to the organization of self-maintaining systems, from the origins of life to human action. This final contribution provides a conceptual synthesis of the volume, showing emergence not only as a descriptive concept, but as a key to understanding causation, normativity, and responsibility across natural and social domains.

Taken as a whole, the volume proposes emergence as a unifying yet non-reductive framework, capable of connecting disciplines while preserving their specificity. It invites readers to engage with complexity not as an obstacle to explanation, but as a fundamental feature of the world and a productive lens for rethinking science, society, and agency.

García-Etxarri, Aitzol[1]
Jiménez-Pazos, Bárbara[2]

Guest Editors