For the past couple of decades, the term "autopoiesis" has been popular in certain scientific and organizational circles. Its literal meaning ("self-creation") hints at the possibility of some sort of emergent behavior that results in "information for free." This diagram from emergentfool.com is typical.
From a philosophical perspective the term is potentially problematic since it seems to imply that something can emerge from nothing...that there are uncaused effects (or that the assertion that all effects have causes is false). A part of the brilliance of Cynefin is that it largely dodges the ontological issue and focuses on the epistemological one.
Regardless, autopoiesis has been used as a concept to explore how organizations know and how they translate knowledge into action. "Exploring the Foundations of Organisational Knowledge" (Vines, Hall,and Naismith) is a recent paper that takes this approach.
They have a nice discussion of Karl Popper's "three worlds", and apply evolutionary theory to KM in a metaphorical fashion...though I was a bit confused by the conflation of evolution's "random mutation" with an organization's individual intelligent agents engaged in purposeful activity.
As a rough metaphor, there's a lot I like about highlighting the emergent aspect of knowledge. However, I'm not sure how useful it is when it comes to specific decisions and actions. Having slogged through Stuart Kauffman's "Origins of Order" a decade ago, I understand the attraction. And, I'm intrigued by ongoing laboratory efforts reproduce the origin of life and the emergence of complex subsystems in living organisms.
Agent-based approaches that decentralize attractor/constraint-oriented behavior clearly have value. But I wonder whether we've hit "peak emergence" (ala "peak oil") in our understanding of this phenomena...we don't seem to be much closer to a good understanding of the underlying causes of emergent information and behavior than we were before the topic became a staple of popular science 20+ years ago.
Whether we have or not, it seems inevitable that the rate of new emergent behavior will continue to accelerate for the foreseeable future as connectivity and interoperability continue to increase at warp speed.
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I do not think we have reached anything like "peak-oil", all that is needed is for continued research to make an insight breakthrough that will advance our undestanding. I am reminded by your statement of the quote "everything is physics is already known" made at the turn of the 20th century. i forget who made it and the exact quote
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