The term synergy was refined by R. Buckminster Fuller, who analyzed some of its implications more fully and coined the term synergetics. A dynamic state in which combined action is favored over the difference of individual component actions. Behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately, known as emergent behavior. The cooperative action of two or more stimuli (or drugs), resulting in a different or greater response than that of the individual stimuli. Information Theory Mathematical formalizations of synergy have been proposed using information theory to rigorously define the relationships between "wholes" and "parts." In this context, synergy is said to occur when there is information present in the joint state of multiple variables that cannot be extracted from the individual parts considered individually. For example, consider the logical XOR gate. If for three binary variables, the mutual information between any individual source and the target is 0 bit. However, the joint mutual information bit. There is information about the target that can only be extracted from the joint state of the inputs considered jointly, and not any others. There is, at yet, no universal agreement on how synergy can best be quantified, with different approaches that decompose information into redundant, unique, and synergistic components appearing in the literature. Despite the lack of universal agreement, information theoretic approaches to statistical synergy have been applied to diverse fields, including climatology, neuroscience sociology, and machine learning Synergy has also been proposed as a possible foundation on which to build a mathematically robust definition of emergence in complex systems and may be relevant to formal theories of consciousness. Biological sciences Synergy of various kinds has been advanced by Peter Corning as a causal agency that can explain the progressive evolution of complexity in living systems over the course of time. According to the Synergism Hypothesis, synergistic effects have been the drivers of cooperative relationships of all kinds and at all levels in living systems. The thesis, in a nutshell, is that synergistic effects have often provided functional advantages (economic benefits) in relation to survival and reproduction that have been favored by natural selection. The cooperating parts, elements, or individuals become, in effect, functional "units" of selection in evolutionary change. Similarly, environmental systems may react in a non-linear way to perturbations, such as climate change, so that the outcome may be greater than the sum of the individual component