Hello, Ms. Bostic St. Clair and Dr. Grinder. 1.  You wrote, "Pretty example - it does beg the key question as to whether there is something in such emergent phenomena outside of the brute fact that we (species - we) seem to be incapable of examining generative systems (specifically, recursive rule systems) and calculating the 'emergent' phenomenon that appears." The instructions for Todd's metaphorical explanation of an emergent phenomenon did not include that the explanation be beautiful.  I also don't agree that Todd's example begs the question.  From browsing Mr. Wolfram's book for 1/2 hour, I believe that Mr. Wolfram can calculate emergent phenomena; he calculates those phenomena right into (imaginary) existence.  The pictures in his book are the result of calculations.  Emergent phenomena are created through the functioning of recursive rules.  Mr. Wolfram is the inventor of Mathematica, and by gosh, he calculates.  His calculations result in, or demonstrate, depending on how you look at it, the production of emergent phenomena.  IMHO, emergent phenomena are just mathematical models shown in pretty pictures. 2.  You wrote, "This, of course, is another way of posing the question whether there is something in emergent phenonema that is cannot be accounted for by this apparent [...] inability to calculate the consequences of these simple generative systems. This is, of course, the central thesis of Wolframs' challenge to the present coding of scientific patterning (A New Kind of Science)." I couldn't agree more, Dr. Grinder.  Wolfram is confident that generative systems are the result of the operation of recursive rules, elementary rules.  He believes that traditional mathematics and mathematical formulas cannot be expected to tell us much about patterns, but his cellular automata can.  He writes, to start off his discussion of "Human Thinking" on page 620, that "When we are presented with new data one thing we can always do is just apply our general powers of human thinking to it."  Of course, given the length of his book, at this time I'd rather keep the few pages of "A New Kind of Science" that I've photocopied, pages 620-635.  Thank goodness I'm still applying my GENERAL powers of thinking; quantum-mechanical interactions of my brain with the outside universe might have unpredictably altered my brain when I visited the library, resulting in me becoming interested in more of Mr. Wolfram's book than the 16 pages I photocopied.  What I have read of Mr. Wolfram's book, all 16 pages worth, let me know that Mr. Wolfram doesn't have much to say about human thinking. He's cautious that cellular automata can help explain the function of human memory; his discussion of that subject is speculation, and that's what the tone of his writing implies to me. I just don't understand what the practical implications of your study of emergence are, at the moment.  But here is an example of how some NLPers might turn your research into NLP-application, you can let me know if I'm off-track here. NLPer: "Ok, enter a know-nothing state, and see what emerges..." Client: "Yeah, man, alright...." NLPer: "Is your state inductive or deductive?  Let your high-performance inductive state lead you to know less and less...." If I don't like "RedTail Math", I'll send it back.  I won't even bother to burn it.  To decide whether to return the book, I'll look inside it for brazenly evil prescriptions from you two authors, such as, for example,  a recommendation for an NLP practitioner to, whenever possible, strap his NLP victim (client) into a chair, hook electrodes up to the victim's head, and test New Code programs on the victim's body.  If I find such a prescription, I'll return your book to the store I bought it from, thank you very much. -nj