Emergence -a brief introduction

Science & Theology News - Features: Emergence
If you don't have time to read some of these rather sexy books about emergence then this article gives you [a] a meaty introduction and [b] a few religious perspectives.

I'm thinking of including this in a possible PhD bid. Perhaps you can see why:
"Some authors have put the emergence idea to much more radical use, finding in it a new universal paradigm. In his widely read book Emergence, for example, author Steven Johnson sees signs of emergence in “the connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software.” Albert-László Barabási’s Linked uses emergent networks to describe sexual relationships, computer chips, the Internet, Hollywood, co-authorships of scientific papers and the economy. In Evolution’s Arrow, John Stewart claims to detect signs of the emergence of larger and larger cooperative organizations; Robert Wright’s Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny predicts the global integration of humankind as an emergent achievement of the human spirit."

Interesting thing is that no-one seems to mention Teilhard de Chardin in this respect and his 'noosphere'. That guy deserves the glory for prescience in this regard, I reckon.