From Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations this experiment caught my eye as it illustrates emergent properties really well. Patterns that are not found in the single entity but arise from the variance in it’s mutlitude. The effects of an emerging property correlates rather then being in direct causal realation to its parts.
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole.
Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry and physics.
In philosophy, theories that emphasize emergent properties have been called emergentism.
Definition from Wikipedia – Emergence