In this paper, we characterise the notion of preferential attachment in
networks as action at a distance, and argue that it can only be an emergent
phenomenon -- the actual mechanism by which networks grow always being the
closing of triangles. After a review of the concepts of triangle closing and
preferential attachment, we present our argument, as well as a simplified model
in which preferential attachment can be derived mathematically from triangle
closing. Additionally, we perform experiments on synthetic graphs to
demonstrate the emergence of preferential attachment in graph growth models
based only on triangle closing.Comment: 13 pages, three figure