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I’m driving myself crazy because I’ve forgotten a word that I used to know. The word describes the phenomenon of a larger organised system that does more or has another function than the collective sum of its constituent parts.

Or the other way round when lots of bodies that have individual functions take on a new macroscopic role as a collective.

Does anyone know what the word I’m looking for is. I’ll recognise it when I see it and I appreciate there may be more than one word for this. It might be a scientific and/or psychology specific word.

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Emergence

an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own. These properties or behaviors emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.

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  • Yes yes yes this is it!
    – pinnochio
    Commented Sep 25, 2020 at 1:32
  • I’m really sorry but I can’t +1 your answer as I have less than 15 points. Did you already know this word or if not how did you know how to look for it?
    – pinnochio
    Commented Sep 25, 2020 at 1:34
  • When you posed the question, I thought of "synergy" and also of "emergent properties" -- which is not a word. When you nixed "synergy," I put "emergent properties" into a search engine and it suggested "emergence" -- which, actually, I haven't seen used. Only "emergent properties."
    – Mary
    Commented Sep 25, 2020 at 1:36
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synergy

the combined power of a group of things when they are working together that is greater than the total power achieved by each working separately:

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  • Thanks. This isn’t the precise word I’m looking for or the scientific word that I came across before. The word I’m looking for describes more of a phenomenon where the collection takes on a new macroscopic role. For example brain cells (neurones ) individually have a role of passing and navigating signals. But billions of them together take on a higher level role (e.g. thinking)
    – pinnochio
    Commented Sep 25, 2020 at 1:29

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