Hello, Charlie. 1.  You wrote, "If memory serves, the examples of emergence which John gave were that of the surprising effect of Moire patterns in the human visual system, and similarly the effects of polyrhythm (in drumming)." See post "Topic: Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Some speculations on the brain architecture of neurological and linguistic transforms" dated  27/05/2002 20:49:12.  If you do a search on the word "emergence", and go to posts containing the word emergence, posts made by Dr. Grinder or both Dr. Grinder & Ms. Bostic St. Clair, you'll find at least two posts that support my speculation.  2.  You wrote, "However, given that John mentioned that they may well tackle a 'formal' definition of emergence, I would have thought it necessary to take a broad and encompassing view of the phenomenon. My orginal posting was partly to try to clarify this and understand what sort of definition(s) they are working with." I interpret you to be challenging any formal representation of emergence that is not of a higher logical level, the "broad and encompassing view" level, of a certain logical type named "emergence", one you describe as "the phenomenon." 3.  You wrote, "The larger purpose though was to understand how 'emergence' is important to epistemology." Well, I've read a little about Dr. Grinder and Ms. Bostic St. Clair's concept of inductive learning processes, as well as their writings in which they contrast conscious versus unconscious learning capacity.... 4.  You wrote, "John framed the investigations of Red-Tail math in somewhat this manner: I have been fascinated with Hawks for many years, and I never tire of watching them soar, their subtle movements, their mastery of flying. So consider the question, 'Does the hawk understand Bernoulli's principle?"'" Yes, and Dr. Grinder and Ms. Bostic St. Clair are concerned with modeling methods.  Maybe they want to justify know-nothing_state learning as a better means of acquiring mastery of a skill than observation and description of the skill.  You could contrast their prescriptions of how to model with the prescriptions of another method, such as the Emprint Method.  Strategy elicitation followed by practiced, conscious strategy adoption is NOT the process that the WITW authors want modelers to follow.  Maybe the hawk is stupid (not much explicit knowledge, in language, of bernoulli's principle), but can fly like a champ. 5.  You wrote, "My main query was because I do understand how this is a question of epistemology...". Imagine you were someone who thought that you couldn't learn how to do something unless you first learn how the process of doing that something worked.  You, as a rational cognitive agent, apply your theory of knowledge (acquisition) to your modeling efforts.  And totally blow it, according to Dr. Grinder and Ms. Bostic St. Clair.  You gain an ability to talk about it, but not to do it. If Red-tail Math is about modeling, and the proposals for modeling are consistent with the WITW proposals, then Red-tail Math probably justifies why to use unconscious uptake to model. 6.  You wrote, "However I have no idea why emergence is related in any important way to that question." There are multiple methods of modeling available to the NLP community.  One such is the Emprint Method.  Each NLP modeling method suggests different sequences of activity that it claims help one achieve modeling success.  Each method is based on an epistemology, including some (explicit) theory of learning.  Maybe Dr. Grinder and Ms. Bostic St. Clair think they can provide theoretical, rather than just empirical, support for the greater efficiacy of their own modeling method.  However they think their logical type "emergence" serves that purpose, perhaps they want to apply that type in their comparisions of methods of learning. Modeling as a practice can serve different purposes.  Strategy elicitation serves a purpose, in first-person teaching, that it does not, in first-person learning.  The different methods of NLP modeling might all have important uses....  Maybe the WITW authors think that unconscious uptake is best for learning from another. Anyway, I've been waiting for more them to kick that **** for a long time.  Where's the book?!  Grr. -nj