forms are essentially just patterns in the collection of their constituent particles or objects. Unlike their constituent objects, they have no existence as independent entities, and they cannot, simply as patterns, act on their environment — in other words, they have no agency. For this reason the emergence of self-organized systems is called soft or weak emergence.

Strong emergence, on the other hand, refers to the appearance of new objects, or new types of objects, in the system. We can identify three levels of strong emergence:

1.  In high energy physics, forces and particles emerge through symmetry breaking. Unlike the increasing energy input required to drive self-organization, this process occurs as free energy in the system decreases and entropy increases.

2.  At relatively moderate energy levels, physical systems produce an increasing variety of chemical compounds. These molecules have an independent existence and distinctive properties, like a characteristic colour of solubility in water, that are not simply the sum of the characteristics of their constituent atoms. They also have a kind of passive agency: for example, they can interact with each other chemically to produce new molecules with new properties, like a new colour. Of course they can also interact physically, 