Formation of a butterfly from a pupa, extraction of a live dove from a magician’s empty hat, generation of new particles from high-energy particle collisions and spawning a new dream world from mind in sleep are all examples of a common, fuzzy notion called ‘emergence’. In this paper, I pin the concept of emergence to the element of surprise in a phenomenon. I categorise the various notions of emergence into three main classes. These definitions are used to explain instances of emergence, organised along a continuous spectrum as normality, magic, miracle and error.
