Chapter 6. Emergence
I live in Brighton, on the southern coast of England. I moved here after a lifetime of living in urban environments; so I was, and remain, enraptured by the view to the south, where there is nothing but sea and sky. I used to walk home past Brighton’s West Pier, a once-beautiful Victorian pleasure palace, abandoned since the 1970s and burned to a skeleton in 2003. It’s now home to many thousands of starlings, and every night shortly before the sun goes down they perform a stunning murmation, circling in complex formations before settling to roost (see figure 6.1).
Figure 6.1. A murmation of starlings over Brighton’s West Pier, photographed by Kevin Meredith (http://lomokev.com). Low-level rules creating higher-level organization.
I find these formations mesmerizing, because they appeal to both sides of my brain. One hemisphere appreciates the natural aesthetic beauty of these creatures in motion and the shapes they form, but there is also the mathematical beauty of the flocking algorithm they are following, that challenges my logical side. Each bird in the formation is obeying simple instincts, oblivious to the higher-level pattern the flock is creating. Their behavior is defined by a small set of rules—orienting themselves in relation to their immediate neighbors, seeking the center of the flock, avoiding the paths of other birds—but these simple low-level rules, when applied en masse, create patterns of abstract beauty on a higher level.