Throughout this course, I've found one aspect of our discussions and readings to be somewhat troubling. There is a tendency proclaim emergence as a penultimate field, emergent phenomenon as universal and terribly important...in short, emergence as not just a new kind of science but the coming messiah of science. It could just be that the field, in particular the content matter, is inherently of a universal and penetrating sort. So if emergence itself claims to be the end-all, be all of reality, then our conversations and emergent literature should similarly describe it as such. I think this is true to a certain extent. In my eyes, however, there is also a some aggrandizing in our conversations and the literature. This is probably an unnecessary conversation to pursue...but are there published criticisms of emergence or some "realistic" assessments of its explanatory or predicting potential? How exactly do notions of emergence presently play into scientific discovery outside of computer & game design?