Roy Williams

Scott, just as the oxygen and hydrogen atoms do not admit to knowing anything about water, genetic mutations wiould not admit to knowing anything about evolution. In biology there is evolution (and devolution) without intention, knowing or learning. Its just a process of variation and (possilbe) adaptation. What happens happens. 

Learning is different, it is does 'admit' of intention and knowing, and even design. It can create, and can be  a response to, all of these factors. 

What is common to both is the process of frequent interaction between numerous micro-agents, none of whom can be aware of the whole picture, which is the prerequisit for emergence, but cannot predict that it will happen, or how.  

One and All ...

encountering the world as it is rather than as it is modeled to be ...

...that is an interesting question ...

The footprints are at one level a complex model, referencing many, many people, texts, and practices, which could obscure our perception.  But we try to work with the paradox of encountering the world as it is, while using the semiotic tools we have - by framing the enterprise (it is a 'continuous beta' or WIP) as a palette-for-description. 

So, we try to attempt no more than to describe the way we encounter the world (of learning and much else besides) as it is - as learners, as designer, as participant researchers, as facilitators. We offer a palette, but its an open palette, as all palettes must be.  

Use some of the colours/factors we have put on the palette, if they are fit for your description of your  engagement with the world as it is. In the process you are ikely to find that you are describing yourself - your emergent self - too, and that can be quite unsettling.  Ignore particular colours/factors, leave them aside if they are 'not applicable'.  Re/Mix new concepts/colours if you need new ones, and share with us, please.

Latour sets us a challenge, i.e. to get the description right, in which case most of the analysis will flow from it automatically. That's a big ask, and I'm not sure if it allows enough role for the imagination, but its one way to think about it. 

Scott, and All ... 

A few thoughts ...

• Emergent learning can be repeated for each (next) individual (like the process of parallel evolution - of eyes, for instance, which I think on current data have evolved on at least four unrelated occasions - so far). Emergent learning for a community (an adademic or professional community) might on the other hand become part of the received wisdom, and not be repeated, although even then, it can always be challenged by the next emergent paradigm. 
• Autopoeisis does seem to be a threshold process for evolution, and Deacon (New Scientist last year some time) wrote a piece on a variation of auotpoesis, autocatalysis (in which a chemical is the product of a chemical reaction simultaneously with being a catalyst for the same reaction) as a possible mechanism for early forms of life.  (See references to related material here ...) 
• I love the scenario of oxygen and hydrogen not 'admitting' to know anything about' the formation of water - because that is totally unexpected (although not necessarily unpredictable) from their point of view.  Many of the properties of water are even more unexpected, and many of them are still unpredicatable (from our theoretical framework, which clearly still has a long way to go). 
• Mathematics is a wonderful example of people imagining new connections and transformations, and describing them in great depth, before anything has been discovered that exhibits those properties - which sometimes only occurs years later. 
• Emergence in evolution is based on interaction, variation, and mistakes (mutations) some of which are serendipitously beneficial, most of which are total failures.  So, as part of biological life, our existence and our evolution is premised on millions of failures, among which are a few beneficial adaptations. Emergence (and the 'creation' of life and new ideas) is not for the faint hearted.  
• Emergence in learning, as a concept, draws on emergence in evolution, within an overall conceptual schema of complexity (complex adaptive systems theory - CAST), but it is not the 'same as' - we need to take the parts that are useful and applicable, and we still have work to do to assemble and configure those aspects of CAST that might be useful to us in understanding emergent learning, particularly learning within social media. 

Nick, precisely

If ... all learning is about transformation of identity

Then ... the learner

Nick, love "carefully anticipated processes" - spot on. It complements, or reconfigures (?) the ideas on 'intentionality' in other discussions in these forums, no? 

And yes ... why do we have to keep saying all this?