Alphabets

Emergence springs from alphabets. An alphabet is a kit of parts, together with rules for combining them.

Christopher Alexander. "Systems Generating Systems" Architectural Design 38, no. December 1968 (1968): 605-610.

If you want to [[provoking emergence | provoke emergence]], design an alphabet.

Examples:

• The english alphabet has 26 letters, together with phonetic rules for combining them into words.
• Minecraft allows you to craft new items with new properties, using a kit of existing items, plus rules for combining them.
• Chemistry defines how you may combine molecules to produce new materials with properties different from the sum of the parts.
• DNA has a tiny alphabet ATCG, but the meanings this alphabet can produce have not yet been exhausted.

[[Composable alphabets]] [[small alphabets]]

Most designers today think of themselves as the designers of objects. If we follow the argument presented here, we reach a very different conclusion. To make objects with complex holistic properties, it is necessary to invent generating systems which will generate objects with the required holistic properties. The designer becomes a designer of generating systems — each capable of generating many objects — rather than a designer of individual objects. — Christopher Alexander, [[Systems Generating Systems]], 1968