The Gaia Hypothesis requires the understanding of emergence and evolution, which I will briefly touch upon. Stephen Johnson presents a wonderful explanation of one of these principles in his book by the same name, “Emergence”. The most memorable example he provides is ants (Johnson, 78). A colony of ants exhibits stunning complexity, but the parts of the system are very simple. One ant has only a few, simple behaviors. But, when connected by pheromones that trace their movements and affect their behaviors, ants can form a larger system that has a behavior and intelligence all its own. The pheromone trails are the ant's cognitive map, lain directly on the territory. Each ant moves along the interconnected pheromone paths, reacting to a small number of pheromones with only a few simple behaviors. All the while, each ant deposits its own pheromones, affecting the system by a small amount (Johnson 74).

I like to think that the activity of ants on a pheromone trail is very similar to the activity passed along between internal representations in cognitive maps. In each system (the brain and the colony) micro activities contribute to the construction and maintenance of the macro whole. Both are ways of learning that exhibit their own kind of self-criticality. Intuitively, this building process makes sense, but how do such interesting systems like ant colonies and brains come into existence? An example of chemical emergence provides us with our answer: evolution.

Evolution is composed of layers of emergent processes, whose foundation is chemical. One of my early misconceptions of evolution was that it is all random. But its most distinguishing feature is how it retains processes that promote survival from generation to generation, while generating chemical diversity that it co-opts later on (Kauffman 82). Simple kinds of emergence layered upon the surface of a heftier, layered landscape, depositing new chemicals at each level. These layers are processes that have accumulated over time. Global Gaia, too, is composed of such a landscape of emergent processes, built upon and intersecting with one another. Returning to Latour's redefinition of nature, these layers also include human processes like culture and technology. We can think of Gaia as an inclusive system. Our participation in this system is only a recently added layer that mimics and reacts to the lower layers. I focused on this idea to try to understand my own emergent processes as I created “The Flocking Party”, through its layering of different metaphors and media. These layers added up to something I could not have predicted.