Self-organization
Encyclopedia
Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern
appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning
. This globally coherent pattern appears from the local interaction of the elements that make up the system, thus the organization is achieved in a way that is parallel (all the elements act at the same time) and distributed (no element is a central coordinator).
. Self-organization is also relevant in chemistry
, where it has often been taken as being synonymous with self-assembly
. The concept of self-organization is central to the description of biological systems, from the subcellular to the ecosystem level. There are also cited examples of "self-organizing" behaviour found in the literature of many other disciplines, both in the natural sciences and the social sciences
such as economics
or anthropology
. Self-organization has also been observed in mathematical systems such as cellular automata
.
Sometimes the notion of self-organization is conflated with that of the related concept of emergence
. Properly defined, however, there may be instances of self-organization without emergence and emergence without self-organization, and it is clear from the literature that the phenomena are not the same. The link between emergence and self-organization remains an active research question.
Self-organization usually relies on three basic ingredients :
of a system can tend by itself to increase the inherent order of a system has a long history. One of the earliest statements of this idea was by the philosopher Descartes
, in the fifth part of his Discourse on Method
, where he presents it hypothetically. Descartes further elaborated on the idea at great length in his unpublished work The World
.
The ancient atomists
(among others) believed that a designing intelligence was unnecessary, arguing that given enough time and space and matter, organization was ultimately inevitable, although there would be no preferred tendency for this to happen.
What Descartes introduced was the idea that the ordinary laws of nature tend to produce organization (For related history, see Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes).
Adam Smith's
idea of the "invisible hand" can be understood as an attempt to describe the influence of the economy as a spontaneous order on people's actions.
Beginning with the 18th century naturalist
s, a movement arose that sought to understand the "universal laws of form" in order to explain the observed forms of living organisms. Because of its association with Lamarckism
, their ideas fell into disrepute until the early 20th century, when pioneers such as D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
revived them. The modern understanding is that there are indeed universal laws (arising from fundamental physics and chemistry) that govern growth and form in biological systems.
Originally, the term "self-organizing" was used by Immanuel Kant
in his Critique of Judgment, where he argued that teleology
is a meaningful concept only if there exists such an entity whose parts or "organs" are simultaneously ends and means. Such a system of organs must be able to behave as if it has a mind of its own, that is, it is capable of governing itself.
The term "self-organizing" was introduced to contemporary science in 1947 by the psychiatrist and engineer W. Ross Ashby
. It was taken up by the cyberneticians Heinz von Foerster
, Gordon Pask
, Stafford Beer
and Norbert Wiener
himself in the second edition of his "Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" (MIT Press 1961).
Self-organization as a word and concept was used by those associated with general systems theory
in the 1960s, but did not become commonplace in the scientific literature until its adoption by physicists and researchers in the field of complex system
s in the 1970s and 1980s. After Ilya Prigogine
's 1977 Nobel Prize, the thermodynamic concept of self-organization
received some attention of the public, and scientific researchers started to migrate
from the cybernetic view to the thermodynamic view.
It should also be noted that, the farther a phenomenon is removed from physics, the more controversial the idea of self-organization as understood by physicists becomes. Also, even when self-organization is clearly present, attempts at explaining it through physics or statistics are usually criticized as reductionistic
.
Similarly, when ideas about self-organization originate in, say, biology or social science, the farther one tries to take the concept into chemistry, physics or mathematics, the more resistance is encountered, usually on the grounds that it implies direction
in fundamental physical processes. However the tendency of hot bodies to get cold (see Thermodynamics
) and by Le Chatelier's Principle
—the statistical mechanics
extension of Newton's Third Law—to oppose this tendency should be noted.
There are several broad classes of physical processes that can be described as self-organization. Such examples from physics
include:
can also be characterized as a self organized system to the extent that normal states of thermal equilibrium characterized by electromagnetic energy absorption are stimulated out of equilibrium in a reverse of the absorption process. “If the matter can be forced out of thermal equilibrium to a sufficient degree, so that the upper state has a higher population than the lower state (population inversion), then more stimulated emission than absorption occurs, leading to coherent growth (amplification or gain) of the electromagnetic wave at the transition frequency.”
Self-organization in chemistry
includes:
The following is an incomplete list of the diverse phenomena which have been described as self-organizing in biology
.
As mentioned above, phenomena from mathematics
and computer science
such as cellular automata
, random graph
s, and some instances of evolutionary computation
and artificial life
exhibit features of self-organization. In swarm robotics
, self-organization is used to produce emergent behavior. In particular the theory of random graphs has been used as a justification for self-organization as a general principle of complex systems. In the field of multi-agent systems, understanding how to engineer systems that are capable of presenting self-organized behavior is a very active research area.
regarded the automatic serial identification
of a black box
and its subsequent reproduction as sufficient to meet the condition of self-organization. The importance of phase locking or the "attraction of frequencies", as he called it, is discussed in the 2nd edition of his "Cybernetics
". Drexler
sees self-replication
as a key step in nano and universal assembly.
By contrast, the four concurrently connected galvanometers of W. Ross Ashby's Homeostat
hunt, when perturbed, to converge on one of many possible stable states. Ashby used his state counting measure of variety
to describe stable states and produced the "Good Regulator
" theorem which requires internal models for self-organized endurance
and stability
(e.g. Nyquist stability criterion
).
Warren McCulloch proposed "Redundancy of Potential Command" as characteristic of the organization of the brain and human nervous system and the necessary condition for self-organization.
Heinz von Foerster
proposed Redundancy, R = 1- H/Hmax , where H is entropy. In essence this states that unused potential communication bandwidth is a measure of self-organization.
In the 1970s Stafford Beer considered this condition as necessary for autonomy
which identifies self-organization in persisting and living systems
. Using Variety analyses he applied his neurophysiologically derived recursive Viable System Model
to management. It consists of five parts: the monitoring of performance of the survival processes (1), their management by recursive application of regulation (2), homeostatic
operational control (3) and development (4) which produce maintenance of identity (5) under environmental perturbation. Focus is prioritized by an alerting "algedonic loop" feedback: a sensitivity to both pain and pleasure produced from under-performance or over-performance relative to a standard capability.
In the 1990s Gordon Pask
pointed out von Foerster's H and Hmax were not independent and interacted via countably infinite
recursive concurrent spin
processes (he favoured the Bohm interpretation
) which he called concepts (liberally defined in any medium, "productive and, incidentally reproductive"). His strict definition of concept "a procedure to bring about a relation" permitted his theorem "Like concepts repel, unlike concepts attract" to state a general spin based Principle of Self-organization. His edict, an exclusion principle, "There are No Doppelgangers" means no two concepts can be the same (all interactions occur with different perspectives making time incommensurable for actors). This means, after sufficient duration as differences assert, all concepts will attract and coalesce as pink noise
and entropy
increases (and see Big Crunch
, self-organized criticality
). The theory is applicable to all organizationally closed
or homeostatic processes that produce endurance
and coherence
(also in the sense of Rescher
Coherence Theory of Truth with the proviso that the sets and their members exert repulsive forces at their boundaries) through interactions: evolving
, learning
and adapting
.
Pask's Interactions of Actors "hard carapace" model is reflected in some of the ideas of emergence
and coherence
. It requires a knot
emergence topology that produces radiation during interaction with a unit cell that has a prismatic tensegrity
structure. Laughlin
's contribution to emergence reflects some of these constraints.
Only certain kinds of networks are self-organizing. These are known as small-world networks, or scale-free networks. These emerge from bottom-up interactions, and appear to be limitless in size. In contrast, there are top-down hierarchical networks, which are not self-organizing. These are typical of organizations, and have severe size limits.
. Tell-tale signs of self-organization are usually statistical properties shared with self-organizing physical systems (see Zipf's law, power law
, Pareto principle
). Examples such as critical mass
, herd behaviour, groupthink
and others, abound in sociology
, economics
, behavioral finance
and anthropology
. The theory of human social self-organization is also known as spontaneous order
theory.
In social theory the concept of self-referentiality has been introduced as a sociological application of self-organization theory by Niklas Luhmann
(1984). For Luhmann the elements of a social system are self-producing communications, i.e. a communication produces further communications and hence a social system can reproduce itself as long as there is dynamic communication. For Luhmann human beings are sensors in the environment of the system.{p410 Social System 1995} Luhmann developed an evolutionary theory of Society and its subsytems, using functional analyses and systems theory. {Social Systems 1995}.
Self-organization in human and computer networks can give rise to a decentralized, distributed, self-healing system, protecting the security of the actors in the network by limiting the scope of knowledge of the entire system held by each individual actor. The Underground Railroad
is a good example of this sort of network. The networks that arise from drug trafficking exhibit similar self-organizing properties. The Sphere College Project
seeks to apply self-organization to adult education. Parallel examples exist in the world of privacy-preserving computer networks such as Tor
. In each case, the network as a whole exhibits distinctive synergistic behavior through the combination of the behaviors of individual actors in the network. Usually the growth of such networks is fueled by an ideology or sociological force that is adhered to or shared by all participants in the network.
is sometimes said to be self-organizing. Paul Krugman
has written on the role that market self-organization plays in the business cycle in his book "The Self Organizing Economy". Friedrich Hayek
coined the term catallaxy
to describe a "self-organizing system of voluntary co-operation," in regards to the spontaneous order of the free market economy. Most modern economists hold that imposing central planning usually makes the self-organized economic system less efficient. By contrast, some socialist economists consider that market failures are so significant that self-organization produces bad results and that the state should direct production and pricing. Many economists adopt an intermediate position and recommend a mixture of market economy and command economy characteristics (sometimes called a mixed economy
). When applied to economics, the concept of self-organization can quickly become ideologically-imbued.
and colleagues and their so-called "global brain
" projects. Marvin Minsky
's "Society of Mind
" and the no-central editor in charge policy of the open sourced internet encyclopedia, called Wikipedia
, are examples of applications of these principles - see collective intelligence
.
Donella Meadows
, who codified twelve leverage points that a self-organizing system could exploit to organize itself, was one of a school of theorists who saw human creativity as part of a general process of adapting human lifeways to the planet and taking humans out of conflict with natural processes. See Gaia philosophy
, deep ecology
, ecology movement
and Green movement
for similar self-organizing ideals. (The connections between self-organisation and Gaia theory and the environmental movement are explored in A. Marshall, 2002, The Unity of Nature, Imperial College Press: London).
The traditional framework of good science is Reductionism
, in the sense that sub-parts are studied individually to understand the bigger part. However, many natural systems cannot simply be explained by a reductionist study of their parts. Self-organization is not studying the whole structure by breaking it down to smaller sub-parts which are then studied individually. The emphasis of the “self-organization” is, rather, the process of how a super macro global structure evolves from local interactions.
"The self that gets organized should not be just the language ability but the cluster of competencies through which it emerges. These probably include a variety of cognitive, social, affective, and motor skills." The human brains, and thus the phenomena of sensation and thought, are also under the strong influence of features of spontaneous organization in their structure. Indeed, the brain, composed of billions of neurons dynamically interacting among themselves and with the outside world, is the prototype of a complex system. A good example of self organization in linguistics is the evolution of Nicaraguan Sign Language
. Examples of linguistic questions in the light of self organization are: e.g. the decentralized generation of lexical and semantic conventions in populations of agents.;the formation of conventionalized syntactic structures; the conditions under which combinatoriality, the property of systematic reuse, can be selected; shared inventories of vowels or syllables in groups of agents, with features of structural regularities greatly resembling those of human languages
Building mathematical models in the context of research into language origins and the evolution of languages is enjoying growing popularity in the scientific community, because it is a crucial tool for studying the phenomena of language in relation to the complex interactions of its components. These systems are put to two main types of use: 1) they serve to evaluate the internal coherence of verbally expressed theories already proposed by clarifying all their hypotheses and verifying that they do indeed lead to the proposed conclusions ; 2) they serve to explore and generate new theories, which themselves often appear when one simply tries to build an artificial system reproducing the verbal behavior of humans.
Therefore, constructing operational models to test hypothesis in linguistics is gaining popularity these days. An operational model is one which defines the set of its assumptions explicitly and above all shows how to calculate their consequences, that is, to prove that they lead to a certain set of conclusions.
follow from this sort of framework (with the parameters stating that information transmitted can be partial or redundant, and the underlying assumption that the sender and receiver each want to take the action in his/her best interest). Likewise, models have shown that compositionality, a central component of human language, emerges dynamically during linguistic evolution, and need not be introduced by biological evolution (Kirby 2000). Tomasello (1999) argues that through one evolutionary step, the ability to sustain culture, the groundwork for the evolution of human language was laid. The ability to ratchet cultural advances cumulatively allowed for the complex development of human cognition unseen in other animals.
, the acquisition of language has also been shown to self-organize. Through the ability to see others as intentional agents (theory of mind), and actions such as 'joint attention
,' human children have the scaffolding they need to learn the language of those around them (Tomasello 1999).
takes the approach that speech production consists of a coordinated series of gestures, called 'constellations,' which are themselves dynamical systems. In this theory, linguistic contrast comes from the distinction between such gestural units, which can be described on a low-dimensional level in the abstract. However, these structures are necessarily context-dependent in real-time production. Thus the context-dependence emerges naturally from the dynamical systems themselves. This statement is controversial, however, as it suggests a universal phonetics which is not evident across languages. Cross-linguistic patterns show that what can be treated as the same gestural units produce different contextualised patterns in different languages. Articulatory Phonology fails to attend to the acoustic output of the gestures themselves (meaning that many typological patterns remain unexplained). Freedom among listeners in the weighting of perceptual cues in the acoustic signal has a more fundamental role to play in the emergence of structure. The realization of the perceptual contrasts by means of articulatory movements means that articulatory considerations do play a role, but these are purely secondary.
” - the process by which a speech community merges into the surrounding speech communities. Nakamura et al. (2008) proposed a variant of this model that incorporates spatial dynamics into language contact transactions in order to describe the emergence of creoles. Both of these models proceed from the assumption that language change, like any self-organizing system, is a large-scale act or entity (in this case the creation or death of a language, or changes in its boundaries) that emerges from many actions on a micro-level. The microlevel in this example is the everyday production and comprehension of language by speakers in areas of language contact.
determines almost all traffic spatiotemporal phenomena observed in real traffic data like traffic breakdown at a highway bottleneck, highway capacity, the emergence of moving traffic jams, etc. Self-organization in traffic flow is extremely complex spatiotemporal dynamic process. For this reason, only in 1996-2002 spatiotemporal self-organization effects in traffic have been understood in real measured traffic data and explained by Boris Kerner
’s three-phase traffic theory.
Dissertations and Theses on Self-organization
Pattern formation
The science of pattern formation deals with the visible, orderly outcomes of self-organisation and the common principles behind similar patterns....
appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning
Planning
Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior...
. This globally coherent pattern appears from the local interaction of the elements that make up the system, thus the organization is achieved in a way that is parallel (all the elements act at the same time) and distributed (no element is a central coordinator).
Overview
The most robust and unambiguous examples of self-organizing systems are from the physics of non-equilibrium processesExtremal principles in non-equilibrium thermodynamics
Energy dissipation and entropy production extremal principles are ideas developed within non-equilibrium thermodynamics that attempt to predict the likely steady states and dynamical structures that a physical system might show. The search for extremum principles for non-equilibrium thermodynamics...
. Self-organization is also relevant in chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
, where it has often been taken as being synonymous with self-assembly
Self-assembly
Self-assembly is a term used to describe processes in which a disordered system of pre-existing components forms an organized structure or pattern as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves, without external direction...
. The concept of self-organization is central to the description of biological systems, from the subcellular to the ecosystem level. There are also cited examples of "self-organizing" behaviour found in the literature of many other disciplines, both in the natural sciences and the social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
such as economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
or anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
. Self-organization has also been observed in mathematical systems such as cellular automata
Cellular automaton
A cellular automaton is a discrete model studied in computability theory, mathematics, physics, complexity science, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling. It consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as "On" and "Off"...
.
Sometimes the notion of self-organization is conflated with that of the related concept of emergence
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
. Properly defined, however, there may be instances of self-organization without emergence and emergence without self-organization, and it is clear from the literature that the phenomena are not the same. The link between emergence and self-organization remains an active research question.
Self-organization usually relies on three basic ingredients :
- Strong dynamical non-linearity, often though not necessarily involving Positive feedbackPositive feedbackPositive feedback is a process in which the effects of a small disturbance on a system include an increase in the magnitude of the perturbation. That is, A produces more of B which in turn produces more of A. In contrast, a system that responds to a perturbation in a way that reduces its effect is...
and Negative feedbackNegative feedbackNegative feedback occurs when the output of a system acts to oppose changes to the input of the system, with the result that the changes are attenuated. If the overall feedback of the system is negative, then the system will tend to be stable.- Overview :... - Balance of exploitation and exploration
- Multiple interactionInteractionInteraction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect...
s
History of the idea
The idea that the dynamicsDynamics (mechanics)
In the field of physics, the study of the causes of motion and changes in motion is dynamics. In other words the study of forces and why objects are in motion. Dynamics includes the study of the effect of torques on motion...
of a system can tend by itself to increase the inherent order of a system has a long history. One of the earliest statements of this idea was by the philosopher Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, in the fifth part of his Discourse on Method
Discourse on Method
The Discourse on the Method is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. Its full name is Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences .The Discourse on Method is best known...
, where he presents it hypothetically. Descartes further elaborated on the idea at great length in his unpublished work The World
The World (Descartes)
The World, originally titled Le Monde and also called Treatise on the Light, is a book by René Descartes . Written between 1629 and 1633, it contains a relatively complete version of his philosophy, from method, to metaphysics, to physics and biology.Descartes was a follower of the mechanical...
.
The ancient atomists
Atomism
Atomism is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that the natural world consists of two fundamental parts: indivisible atoms and empty void.According to Aristotle, atoms are indestructible and immutable and there are an infinite variety of shapes...
(among others) believed that a designing intelligence was unnecessary, arguing that given enough time and space and matter, organization was ultimately inevitable, although there would be no preferred tendency for this to happen.
What Descartes introduced was the idea that the ordinary laws of nature tend to produce organization (For related history, see Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes).
Adam Smith's
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
idea of the "invisible hand" can be understood as an attempt to describe the influence of the economy as a spontaneous order on people's actions.
Beginning with the 18th century naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
s, a movement arose that sought to understand the "universal laws of form" in order to explain the observed forms of living organisms. Because of its association with Lamarckism
Lamarckism
Lamarckism is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring . It is named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , who incorporated the action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories...
, their ideas fell into disrepute until the early 20th century, when pioneers such as D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS FRSE was a Scottish biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar. A pioneering mathematical biologist, he is mainly remembered as the author of the 1917 book On Growth and Form, written largely in Dundee in 1915...
revived them. The modern understanding is that there are indeed universal laws (arising from fundamental physics and chemistry) that govern growth and form in biological systems.
Originally, the term "self-organizing" was used by Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
in his Critique of Judgment, where he argued that teleology
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
is a meaningful concept only if there exists such an entity whose parts or "organs" are simultaneously ends and means. Such a system of organs must be able to behave as if it has a mind of its own, that is, it is capable of governing itself.
The term "self-organizing" was introduced to contemporary science in 1947 by the psychiatrist and engineer W. Ross Ashby
William Ross Ashby
W. Ross Ashby was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of complex systems. His first name was not used: he was known as Ross Ashby....
. It was taken up by the cyberneticians Heinz von Foerster
Heinz von Foerster
Heinz von Foerster was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy. Together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Lawrence J. Fogel, and others, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of cybernetics.-Biography:Von Foerster was born in 1911 in Vienna, Austria,...
, Gordon Pask
Gordon Pask
Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask was an English cybernetician and psychologist who made significant contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and educational technology....
, Stafford Beer
Anthony Stafford Beer
Anthony Stafford Beer was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics.- Biography :...
and Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
himself in the second edition of his "Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" (MIT Press 1961).
Self-organization as a word and concept was used by those associated with general systems theory
Systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
in the 1960s, but did not become commonplace in the scientific literature until its adoption by physicists and researchers in the field of complex system
Complex system
A complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties not obvious from the properties of the individual parts....
s in the 1970s and 1980s. After Ilya Prigogine
Ilya Prigogine
Ilya, Viscount Prigogine was a Russian-born naturalized Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.-Biography :...
's 1977 Nobel Prize, the thermodynamic concept of self-organization
received some attention of the public, and scientific researchers started to migrate
from the cybernetic view to the thermodynamic view.
Examples
The following list summarizes and classifies the instances of self-organization found in different disciplines. As the list grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine whether these phenomena are all fundamentally the same process, or the same label applied to several different processes. Self-organization, despite its intuitive simplicity as a concept, has proven notoriously difficult to define and pin down formally or mathematically, and it is entirely possible that any precise definition might not include all the phenomena to which the label has been applied.It should also be noted that, the farther a phenomenon is removed from physics, the more controversial the idea of self-organization as understood by physicists becomes. Also, even when self-organization is clearly present, attempts at explaining it through physics or statistics are usually criticized as reductionistic
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
.
Similarly, when ideas about self-organization originate in, say, biology or social science, the farther one tries to take the concept into chemistry, physics or mathematics, the more resistance is encountered, usually on the grounds that it implies direction
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
in fundamental physical processes. However the tendency of hot bodies to get cold (see Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...
) and by Le Chatelier's Principle
Le Châtelier's principle
In chemistry, Le Chatelier's principle, also called the Chatelier's principle, can be used to predict the effect of a change in conditions on a chemical equilibrium. The principle is named after Henry Louis Le Chatelier and sometimes Karl Ferdinand Braun who discovered it independently...
—the statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...
extension of Newton's Third Law—to oppose this tendency should be noted.
Self-organization in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
include:
- structural (order-disorder, first-order) phase transitionPhase transitionA phase transition is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase or state of matter to another.A phase of a thermodynamic system and the states of matter have uniform physical properties....
s, and spontaneous symmetry breakingSpontaneous symmetry breakingSpontaneous symmetry breaking is the process by which a system described in a theoretically symmetrical way ends up in an apparently asymmetric state....
such as- spontaneous magnetizationSpontaneous magnetizationSpontaneous magnetization is the term used to describe the appearance of an ordered spin state at zero applied magnetic field in a ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic material below a critical point called the Curie temperature or .-Overview:...
, crystallizationCrystallizationCrystallization is the process of formation of solid crystals precipitating from a solution, melt or more rarely deposited directly from a gas. Crystallization is also a chemical solid–liquid separation technique, in which mass transfer of a solute from the liquid solution to a pure solid...
(see crystal growthCrystal growthA crystal is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. Crystal growth is a major stage of a crystallization process, and consists in the addition of new atoms, ions, or polymer strings into...
, and liquid crystalLiquid crystalLiquid crystals are a state of matter that have properties between those of a conventional liquid and those of a solid crystal. For instance, an LC may flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a crystal-like way. There are many different types of LC phases, which can be...
) in the classical domainClassical physicsWhat "classical physics" refers to depends on the context. When discussing special relativity, it refers to the Newtonian physics which preceded relativity, i.e. the branches of physics based on principles developed before the rise of relativity and quantum mechanics...
and - the laserLaserA laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of photons. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation...
, superconductivitySuperconductivitySuperconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance occurring in certain materials below a characteristic temperature. It was discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911 in Leiden. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum...
and Bose-Einstein condensation, in the quantum domain (but with macroscopic manifestations)
- spontaneous magnetization
- second-order phase transition, associated with "critical pointsCritical point (thermodynamics)In physical chemistry, thermodynamics, chemistry and condensed matter physics, a critical point, also called a critical state, specifies the conditions at which a phase boundary ceases to exist...
" at which the system exhibits scale-invariant structuresFractalA fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity...
. Examples of these include:- critical opalescenceCritical opalescenceCritical opalescence is a phenomenon which arises in the region of a continuous, or second-order, phase transition. Originally reported by Thomas Andrews in 1869 for the liquid-gas transition in carbon dioxide, many other examples have been discovered since. The phenomenon is most commonly...
of fluids at the critical pointCritical point (thermodynamics)In physical chemistry, thermodynamics, chemistry and condensed matter physics, a critical point, also called a critical state, specifies the conditions at which a phase boundary ceases to exist... - percolationPercolationIn physics, chemistry and materials science, percolation concerns the movement and filtering of fluids through porous materials...
in random media
- critical opalescence
- structure formationStructure formationStructure formation refers to a fundamental problem in physical cosmology. The universe, as is now known from observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation, began in a hot, dense, nearly uniform state approximately 13.7 Gyr ago...
in thermodynamic systems away from equilibriumNon-equilibrium thermodynamicsNon-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Most systems found in nature are not in thermodynamic equilibrium; for they are changing or can be triggered to change over time, and are continuously and discontinuously...
. The theory of dissipative structures of Prigogine and Hermann Haken's SynergeticsSynergeticsSynergetics is an interdisciplinary science explaining the formation and self-organization of patterns and structures in open systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. It is founded by Hermann Haken, inspired by the laser theory....
were developed to unify the understanding of these phenomena, which include lasers, turbulence and convective instabilities (e.g., Bénard cells) in fluid dynamicsFluid dynamicsIn physics, fluid dynamics is a sub-discipline of fluid mechanics that deals with fluid flow—the natural science of fluids in motion. It has several subdisciplines itself, including aerodynamics and hydrodynamics...
,- structure formationStructure formationStructure formation refers to a fundamental problem in physical cosmology. The universe, as is now known from observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation, began in a hot, dense, nearly uniform state approximately 13.7 Gyr ago...
in astrophysics and cosmology (including star formationStar formationStar formation is the process by which dense parts of molecular clouds collapse into a ball of plasma to form a star. As a branch of astronomy star formation includes the study of the interstellar medium and giant molecular clouds as precursors to the star formation process and the study of young...
, planetary systems formation, galaxy formation) - self-similar expansion
- Diffusion-limited aggregationDiffusion-limited aggregationDiffusion-limited aggregation is the process whereby particles undergoing a random walk due to Brownian motion cluster together to form aggregates of such particles. This theory, proposed by Witten and Sander in 1981, is applicable to aggregation in any system where diffusion is the primary means...
- percolationPercolationIn physics, chemistry and materials science, percolation concerns the movement and filtering of fluids through porous materials...
- reaction-diffusion systems, such as Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactionBelousov-Zhabotinsky reactionA Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, or BZ reaction, is one of a class of reactions that serve as a classical example of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, resulting in the establishment of a nonlinear chemical oscillator. The only common element in these oscillating systems is the inclusion of bromine...
- structure formation
- self-organizing dynamical systemDynamical systemA dynamical system is a concept in mathematics where a fixed rule describes the time dependence of a point in a geometrical space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a pipe, and the number of fish each springtime in a...
s: complex systems made up of small, simple units connected to each other usually exhibit self-organization- Self-organized criticalitySelf-organized criticalityIn physics, self-organized criticality is a property of dynamical systems which have a critical point as an attractor. Their macroscopic behaviour thus displays the spatial and/or temporal scale-invariance characteristic of the critical point of a phase transition, but without the need to tune...
(SOC)
- Self-organized criticality
- In spin foamSpin foamIn physics, a spin foam is a topological structure made out of two-dimensional faces that represents one of the configurations that must be summed to obtain a Feynman's path integral description of quantum gravity...
system and loop quantum gravityLoop quantum gravityLoop quantum gravity , also known as loop gravity and quantum geometry, is a proposed quantum theory of spacetime which attempts to reconcile the theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity...
that was proposed by Lee SmolinLee SmolinLee Smolin is an American theoretical physicist, a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo. He is married to Dina Graser, a communications lawyer in Toronto. His brother is David M...
. The main idea is that the evolution of space in time should be robust in general. Any fine-tuning of cosmological parameters weaken the independency of the fundamental theory. Philosophically, it can be assumed that in the early time, there has not been any agent to tune the cosmological parameters. Smolin and his colleagues in a series of works show that, based on the loop quantization of spacetime, in the very early time, a simple evolutionary model (similar to the sand pile modelStructured criticalityStructured criticality is a property of complex systems whereby small events may trigger larger events due to subtle interdependencies between elements. This often gives rise to a kind of stratified chaos where the general behavior of the system can be modeled on one scale while smaller- and...
) behaves as a power law distribution on both the size and area of avalanche.- Although, this model, which is restricted only on the frozen spin networks, exhibits a non-stationary expansion of the universe. However, it is the first serious attempt toward the final ambitious goal of determining the cosmic expansion and inflation based on a self-organized criticality theory in which the parameters are not tuned, but instead are determined from within the complex system.
Self-organization vs. entropy
A laserLaser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of photons. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation...
can also be characterized as a self organized system to the extent that normal states of thermal equilibrium characterized by electromagnetic energy absorption are stimulated out of equilibrium in a reverse of the absorption process. “If the matter can be forced out of thermal equilibrium to a sufficient degree, so that the upper state has a higher population than the lower state (population inversion), then more stimulated emission than absorption occurs, leading to coherent growth (amplification or gain) of the electromagnetic wave at the transition frequency.”
Self-organization in chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
includes:
- molecular self-assemblyMolecular self-assemblyMolecular self-assembly is the process by which molecules adopt a defined arrangement without guidance or management from an outside source. There are two types of self-assembly, intramolecular self-assembly and intermolecular self-assembly...
- reaction-diffusion systems and oscillating chemical reactionChemical reactionA chemical reaction is a process that leads to the transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Chemical reactions can be either spontaneous, requiring no input of energy, or non-spontaneous, typically following the input of some type of energy, such as heat, light or electricity...
s - autocatalyticAutocatalysisA single chemical reaction is said to have undergone autocatalysis, or be autocatalytic, if the reaction product itself is the catalyst for that reaction....
networks (see: autocatalytic setAutocatalytic setAn autocatalytic set is a collection of entities, each of which can be created catalytically by other entities within the set, such that as a whole, the set is able to catalyze its own production. In this way the set as a whole is said to be autocatalytic...
) - liquid crystalLiquid crystalLiquid crystals are a state of matter that have properties between those of a conventional liquid and those of a solid crystal. For instance, an LC may flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a crystal-like way. There are many different types of LC phases, which can be...
s - colloidal crystals
- self-assembled monolayerSelf-assembled monolayerA self assembled monolayer is an organized layer of amphiphilic molecules in which one end of the molecule, the “head group” shows a specific, reversible affinity for a substrate...
s - micelleMicelleA micelle is an aggregate of surfactant molecules dispersed in a liquid colloid. A typical micelle in aqueous solution forms an aggregate with the hydrophilic "head" regions in contact with surrounding solvent, sequestering the hydrophobic single tail regions in the micelle centre. This phase is...
s - microphase separation of block copolymers
- Langmuir-Blodgett filmLangmuir-Blodgett filmA Langmuir–Blodgett film contains one or more monolayers of an organic material, deposited from the surface of a liquid onto a solid by immersing the solid substrate into the liquid. A monolayer is adsorbed homogeneously with each immersion or emersion step, thus films with very accurate...
s
Self-organization in biology
According to Scott Camazine.. [et al.]:The following is an incomplete list of the diverse phenomena which have been described as self-organizing in biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
.
- spontaneous folding of proteinsProtein foldingProtein folding is the process by which a protein structure assumes its functional shape or conformation. It is the physical process by which a polypeptide folds into its characteristic and functional three-dimensional structure from random coil....
and other biomacromolecules - formation of lipid bilayerLipid bilayerThe lipid bilayer is a thin membrane made of two layers of lipid molecules. These membranes are flat sheets that form a continuous barrier around cells. The cell membrane of almost all living organisms and many viruses are made of a lipid bilayer, as are the membranes surrounding the cell nucleus...
membranes - homeostasisHomeostasisHomeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
(the self-maintaining nature of systems from the cellCell (biology)The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and is often called the building block of life. The Alberts text discusses how the "cellular building blocks" move to shape developing embryos....
to the whole organism) - pattern formationPattern formationThe science of pattern formation deals with the visible, orderly outcomes of self-organisation and the common principles behind similar patterns....
and morphogenesisMorphogenesisMorphogenesis , is the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape...
, or how the living organism developsDevelopmental biologyDevelopmental biology is the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop. Modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation and "morphogenesis", which is the process that gives rise to tissues, organs and anatomy.- Related fields of study...
and grows. See also embryologyEmbryologyEmbryology is a science which is about the development of an embryo from the fertilization of the ovum to the fetus stage...
. - the coordination of human movement, e.g. seminal studies of bimanual coordination by KelsoJ. A. Scott KelsoJ. A. Scott Kelso is a neuroscientist, and Professor of Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Professor of Psychology, Biological Sciences and Biomedical Science at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida and The University of Ulster in Derry, N...
- the creation of structures by social animals, such as social insectInsectInsects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
s (beeBeeBees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila...
s, antAntAnts are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...
s, termiteTermiteTermites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...
s), and many mammalMammalMammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
s - flockingFlocking (behavior)Flocking behavior is the behavior exhibited when a group of birds, called a flock, are foraging or in flight. There are parallels with the shoaling behavior of fish, the swarming behavior of insects, and herd behavior of land animals....
behaviour (such as the formation of flocks by birdBirdBirds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s, schools of fishFishFish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
, etc.) - the origin of life itself from self-organizing chemical systems, in the theories of hypercycleHypercycleHypercycle may refer to:* Hypercycle , a line of equal distance in hyperbolic geometry* Hypercycle , a kind of reaction network prominent in a theory of the self-organization of matter, see Manfred Eigen and quasispecies model...
s and autocatalytic networksAutocatalytic setAn autocatalytic set is a collection of entities, each of which can be created catalytically by other entities within the set, such that as a whole, the set is able to catalyze its own production. In this way the set as a whole is said to be autocatalytic... - the organization of Earth's biosphere in a way that is broadly conducive to life (according to the controversial Gaia hypothesisGaia hypothesisThe Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the...
)
Self-organization in mathematics and computer science
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
such as cellular automata
Cellular automaton
A cellular automaton is a discrete model studied in computability theory, mathematics, physics, complexity science, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling. It consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as "On" and "Off"...
, random graph
Random graph
In mathematics, a random graph is a graph that is generated by some random process. The theory of random graphs lies at the intersection between graph theory and probability theory, and studies the properties of typical random graphs.-Random graph models:...
s, and some instances of evolutionary computation
Evolutionary computation
In computer science, evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence that involves combinatorial optimization problems....
and artificial life
Artificial life
Artificial life is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986...
exhibit features of self-organization. In swarm robotics
Swarm robotics
Swarm robotics is a new approach to the coordination of multirobot systems which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment...
, self-organization is used to produce emergent behavior. In particular the theory of random graphs has been used as a justification for self-organization as a general principle of complex systems. In the field of multi-agent systems, understanding how to engineer systems that are capable of presenting self-organized behavior is a very active research area.
Self-organization in cybernetics
WienerNorbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
regarded the automatic serial identification
System identification
In control engineering, the field of system identification uses statistical methods to build mathematical models of dynamical systems from measured data...
of a black box
Black box
A black box is a device, object, or system whose inner workings are unknown; only the input, transfer, and output are known characteristics.The term black box can also refer to:-In science and technology:*Black box theory, a philosophical theory...
and its subsequent reproduction as sufficient to meet the condition of self-organization. The importance of phase locking or the "attraction of frequencies", as he called it, is discussed in the 2nd edition of his "Cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
". Drexler
K. Eric Drexler
Dr. Kim Eric Drexler is an American engineer best known for popularizing the potential of molecular nanotechnology , from the 1970s and 1980s.His 1991 doctoral thesis at MIT was revised and published as...
sees self-replication
Molecular assembler
A molecular assembler, as defined by K. Eric Drexler, is a "proposed device able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic precision". Some biological molecules such as ribosomes fit this definition. This is because they receive instructions from messenger RNA and...
as a key step in nano and universal assembly.
By contrast, the four concurrently connected galvanometers of W. Ross Ashby's Homeostat
Homeostat
The Homeostat is one of the first devices capable of adapting itself to the environment; it exhibited behaviours such as habituation, reinforcement and learning through its ability to maintain homeostasis in a changing environment. It was built by William Ross Ashby in 1948 at Barnwood House Hospital...
hunt, when perturbed, to converge on one of many possible stable states. Ashby used his state counting measure of variety
Variety (cybernetics)
In cybernetics the term variety denotes the total number of distinct states of a system.- Overview :The term Variety was introduced by W. Ross Ashby to denote the count of the total number of states of a system. The condition for dynamic stability under perturbation was described by his Law of...
to describe stable states and produced the "Good Regulator
Good Regulator
The Good Regulator is a theorem due to Roger C. Conant and W. Ross Ashby that is central to cybernetics. It is stated "Every Good Regulator of a system must be a model of that system"....
" theorem which requires internal models for self-organized endurance
Endurantism
Endurantism or endurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. According to the endurantist view material objects are persisting three-dimensional individuals wholly present at every moment of their existence...
and stability
Stability
-Mathematics:*Stability theory, the study of the stability of solutions to differential equations and dynamical systems**Lyapunov stability**Structural stability*Stability of a point in geometric invariant theory....
(e.g. Nyquist stability criterion
Nyquist stability criterion
When designing a feedback control system, it is generally necessary to determine whether the closed-loop system will be stable. An example of a destabilizing feedback control system would be a car steering system that overcompensates -- if the car drifts in one direction, the control system...
).
Warren McCulloch proposed "Redundancy of Potential Command" as characteristic of the organization of the brain and human nervous system and the necessary condition for self-organization.
Heinz von Foerster
Heinz von Foerster
Heinz von Foerster was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy. Together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Lawrence J. Fogel, and others, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of cybernetics.-Biography:Von Foerster was born in 1911 in Vienna, Austria,...
proposed Redundancy, R = 1- H/Hmax , where H is entropy. In essence this states that unused potential communication bandwidth is a measure of self-organization.
In the 1970s Stafford Beer considered this condition as necessary for autonomy
Autonomy
Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...
which identifies self-organization in persisting and living systems
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
. Using Variety analyses he applied his neurophysiologically derived recursive Viable System Model
Viable System Model
The viable systems model, or VSM is a model of the organisational structure of any viable or autonomous system. A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are...
to management. It consists of five parts: the monitoring of performance of the survival processes (1), their management by recursive application of regulation (2), homeostatic
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
operational control (3) and development (4) which produce maintenance of identity (5) under environmental perturbation. Focus is prioritized by an alerting "algedonic loop" feedback: a sensitivity to both pain and pleasure produced from under-performance or over-performance relative to a standard capability.
In the 1990s Gordon Pask
Gordon Pask
Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask was an English cybernetician and psychologist who made significant contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and educational technology....
pointed out von Foerster's H and Hmax were not independent and interacted via countably infinite
Countable set
In mathematics, a countable set is a set with the same cardinality as some subset of the set of natural numbers. A set that is not countable is called uncountable. The term was originated by Georg Cantor...
recursive concurrent spin
Spin (physics)
In quantum mechanics and particle physics, spin is a fundamental characteristic property of elementary particles, composite particles , and atomic nuclei.It is worth noting that the intrinsic property of subatomic particles called spin and discussed in this article, is related in some small ways,...
processes (he favoured the Bohm interpretation
Bohm interpretation
The de Broglie–Bohm theory, also called the pilot-wave theory, Bohmian mechanics, and the causal interpretation, is an interpretation of quantum theory. In addition to a wavefunction on the space of all possible configurations, it also includes an actual configuration, even in situations where...
) which he called concepts (liberally defined in any medium, "productive and, incidentally reproductive"). His strict definition of concept "a procedure to bring about a relation" permitted his theorem "Like concepts repel, unlike concepts attract" to state a general spin based Principle of Self-organization. His edict, an exclusion principle, "There are No Doppelgangers" means no two concepts can be the same (all interactions occur with different perspectives making time incommensurable for actors). This means, after sufficient duration as differences assert, all concepts will attract and coalesce as pink noise
Pink noise
Pink noise or 1/ƒ noise is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density is inversely proportional to the frequency. In pink noise, each octave carries an equal amount of noise power...
and entropy
Entropy
Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when...
increases (and see Big Crunch
Big Crunch
In physical cosmology, the Big Crunch is one possible scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the metric expansion of space eventually reverses and the universe recollapses, ultimately ending as a black hole singularity.- Overview :...
, self-organized criticality
Self-organized criticality
In physics, self-organized criticality is a property of dynamical systems which have a critical point as an attractor. Their macroscopic behaviour thus displays the spatial and/or temporal scale-invariance characteristic of the critical point of a phase transition, but without the need to tune...
). The theory is applicable to all organizationally closed
Closure (topology)
In mathematics, the closure of a subset S in a topological space consists of all points in S plus the limit points of S. Intuitively, these are all the points that are "near" S. A point which is in the closure of S is a point of closure of S...
or homeostatic processes that produce endurance
Endurantism
Endurantism or endurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. According to the endurantist view material objects are persisting three-dimensional individuals wholly present at every moment of their existence...
and coherence
Coherence (physics)
In physics, coherence is a property of waves that enables stationary interference. More generally, coherence describes all properties of the correlation between physical quantities of a wave....
(also in the sense of Rescher
Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher is an American philosopher at the University of Pittsburgh. In a productive research career extending over six decades, Rescher has established himself as a systematic philosopher of the old style and author of a system of pragmatic idealism which weaves together threads of...
Coherence Theory of Truth with the proviso that the sets and their members exert repulsive forces at their boundaries) through interactions: evolving
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
, learning
Learning
Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...
and adapting
Adaptation
An adaptation in biology is a trait with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is maintained and evolved by means of natural selection. An adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation....
.
Pask's Interactions of Actors "hard carapace" model is reflected in some of the ideas of emergence
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
and coherence
Coherence (physics)
In physics, coherence is a property of waves that enables stationary interference. More generally, coherence describes all properties of the correlation between physical quantities of a wave....
. It requires a knot
Knot theory
In topology, knot theory is the study of mathematical knots. While inspired by knots which appear in daily life in shoelaces and rope, a mathematician's knot differs in that the ends are joined together so that it cannot be undone. In precise mathematical language, a knot is an embedding of a...
emergence topology that produces radiation during interaction with a unit cell that has a prismatic tensegrity
Tensegrity
Tensegrity, tensional integrity or floating compression, is a structural principle based on the use of isolated components in compression inside a net of continuous tension, in such a way that the compressed members do not touch each other and the prestressed tensioned members delineate the...
structure. Laughlin
Robert B. Laughlin
Robert Betts Laughlin is a professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University. Along with Horst L. Störmer of Columbia University and Daniel C. Tsui of Princeton University, he was awarded a share of the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for their explanation of the fractional quantum Hall...
's contribution to emergence reflects some of these constraints.
Self-organization in networks
Self-organization is an important component for a successful ability to establish networking whenever needed. Such mechanisms are also referred to as Self-organizing networks. Intensified work in the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century was mainly due to interest from the wireless communications industry. It is driven by the plug and play paradigm, and that wireless networks need to be relatively simpler to manage than they used to be.Only certain kinds of networks are self-organizing. These are known as small-world networks, or scale-free networks. These emerge from bottom-up interactions, and appear to be limitless in size. In contrast, there are top-down hierarchical networks, which are not self-organizing. These are typical of organizations, and have severe size limits.
Self-organization in human society
The self-organizing behaviour of social animals and the self-organization of simple mathematical structures both suggest that self-organization should be expected in human societySociety
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
. Tell-tale signs of self-organization are usually statistical properties shared with self-organizing physical systems (see Zipf's law, power law
Power law
A power law is a special kind of mathematical relationship between two quantities. When the frequency of an event varies as a power of some attribute of that event , the frequency is said to follow a power law. For instance, the number of cities having a certain population size is found to vary...
, Pareto principle
Pareto principle
The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.Business-management consultant Joseph M...
). Examples such as critical mass
Critical mass (sociodynamics)
Critical mass is a sociodynamic term to describe the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and creates further growth....
, herd behaviour, groupthink
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
and others, abound in sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, behavioral finance
Behavioral finance
Behavioral economics and its related area of study, behavioral finance, use social, cognitive and emotional factors in understanding the economic decisions of individuals and institutions performing economic functions, including consumers, borrowers and investors, and their effects on market...
and anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
. The theory of human social self-organization is also known as spontaneous order
Spontaneous order
Spontaneous order, also known as "self-organization", is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos. It is a process found in physical, biological, and social networks, as well as economics, though the term "self-organization" is more often used for physical and biological processes,...
theory.
In social theory the concept of self-referentiality has been introduced as a sociological application of self-organization theory by Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, and a prominent thinker in sociological systems theory.-Biography:...
(1984). For Luhmann the elements of a social system are self-producing communications, i.e. a communication produces further communications and hence a social system can reproduce itself as long as there is dynamic communication. For Luhmann human beings are sensors in the environment of the system.{p410 Social System 1995} Luhmann developed an evolutionary theory of Society and its subsytems, using functional analyses and systems theory. {Social Systems 1995}.
Self-organization in human and computer networks can give rise to a decentralized, distributed, self-healing system, protecting the security of the actors in the network by limiting the scope of knowledge of the entire system held by each individual actor. The Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
is a good example of this sort of network. The networks that arise from drug trafficking exhibit similar self-organizing properties. The Sphere College Project
The Sphere College Project
The Sphere College Project is a project to create a high-quality, financially accessible educational institution for adults. It was founded in April 2009 in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania to provide education to adults who do not fit the prevailing model of higher education...
seeks to apply self-organization to adult education. Parallel examples exist in the world of privacy-preserving computer networks such as Tor
Tor (anonymity network)
Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
. In each case, the network as a whole exhibits distinctive synergistic behavior through the combination of the behaviors of individual actors in the network. Usually the growth of such networks is fueled by an ideology or sociological force that is adhered to or shared by all participants in the network.
In economics
In economics, a market economyMarket economy
A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...
is sometimes said to be self-organizing. Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...
has written on the role that market self-organization plays in the business cycle in his book "The Self Organizing Economy". Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August Hayek CH , born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought...
coined the term catallaxy
Catallaxy
Catallaxy or Catallactics is an alternative expression for the word "Economy." Whereas the word Economy suggests that people in a community possess a common and congruent set of values and goals, Catallaxy suggests that the emergent properties of a market are the outgrowths of the diverse and...
to describe a "self-organizing system of voluntary co-operation," in regards to the spontaneous order of the free market economy. Most modern economists hold that imposing central planning usually makes the self-organized economic system less efficient. By contrast, some socialist economists consider that market failures are so significant that self-organization produces bad results and that the state should direct production and pricing. Many economists adopt an intermediate position and recommend a mixture of market economy and command economy characteristics (sometimes called a mixed economy
Mixed economy
Mixed economy is an economic system in which both the state and private sector direct the economy, reflecting characteristics of both market economies and planned economies. Most mixed economies can be described as market economies with strong regulatory oversight, in addition to having a variety...
). When applied to economics, the concept of self-organization can quickly become ideologically-imbued.
In collective intelligence
Non-thermodynamic concepts of entropy and self-organization have been explored by many theorists. Cliff JoslynCliff Joslyn
Cliff Joslyn is an American cognitive scientist, cyberneticist, and currently Chief Scientist for Knowledge Sciences at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, USA.- Biography :...
and colleagues and their so-called "global brain
Global brain
The Global Brain is a metaphor for the worldwide intelligent network formed by people together with the information and communication technologies that connect them into an "organic" whole...
" projects. Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
's "Society of Mind
Society of Mind
The Society of Mind is both the title of a book and the name of a theory of natural intelligence as written and developed by Marvin Minsky.-Minsky's model:...
" and the no-central editor in charge policy of the open sourced internet encyclopedia, called Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, are examples of applications of these principles - see collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
.
Donella Meadows
Donella Meadows
Donella H. "Dana" Meadows was a pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher and writer. She is best known as lead author of the influential book The Limits to Growth, which made headlines around the world.- Life :Born in Elgin, Illinois, Meadows was educated in science, receiving a B.A...
, who codified twelve leverage points that a self-organizing system could exploit to organize itself, was one of a school of theorists who saw human creativity as part of a general process of adapting human lifeways to the planet and taking humans out of conflict with natural processes. See Gaia philosophy
Gaia philosophy
Gaia philosophy is a broadly inclusive term for related concepts that living organisms on a planet will affect the nature of their environment in order to make the environment more suitable for life. This set of theories holds that all organisms on an extraterrestrial life-giving planet regulate...
, deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
, ecology movement
Ecology movement
The global ecology movement is based upon environmental protection, and is one of several new social movements that emerged at the end of the 1960s. As a values-driven social movement, it should be distinguished from the pre-existing science of ecology....
and Green movement
Green Movement
The Green Movement refers to a series of actions after the 2009 Iranian presidential election, in which protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office...
for similar self-organizing ideals. (The connections between self-organisation and Gaia theory and the environmental movement are explored in A. Marshall, 2002, The Unity of Nature, Imperial College Press: London).
Self-organization in linguistics
Self-organization refers to a property by which complex systems spontaneously generate organized structures". It is the spontaneous formation of well organized structures, patterns, or behaviors, from random initial conditions. It is the process of macroscopic outcomes emerging from local interactions of components of the system, but the global organizational properties are not to be found at the local level. The systems used to study this phenomenon are referred to as dynamical systems: state-determined systems. They possess a large number of elements or variables, and thus very large state spaces.The traditional framework of good science is Reductionism
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
, in the sense that sub-parts are studied individually to understand the bigger part. However, many natural systems cannot simply be explained by a reductionist study of their parts. Self-organization is not studying the whole structure by breaking it down to smaller sub-parts which are then studied individually. The emphasis of the “self-organization” is, rather, the process of how a super macro global structure evolves from local interactions.
"The self that gets organized should not be just the language ability but the cluster of competencies through which it emerges. These probably include a variety of cognitive, social, affective, and motor skills." The human brains, and thus the phenomena of sensation and thought, are also under the strong influence of features of spontaneous organization in their structure. Indeed, the brain, composed of billions of neurons dynamically interacting among themselves and with the outside world, is the prototype of a complex system. A good example of self organization in linguistics is the evolution of Nicaraguan Sign Language
Nicaraguan Sign Language
Nicaraguan Sign Language is a signed language spontaneously developed by deaf children in a number of schools in western Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s...
. Examples of linguistic questions in the light of self organization are: e.g. the decentralized generation of lexical and semantic conventions in populations of agents.;the formation of conventionalized syntactic structures; the conditions under which combinatoriality, the property of systematic reuse, can be selected; shared inventories of vowels or syllables in groups of agents, with features of structural regularities greatly resembling those of human languages
Methodology
In many complex systems in nature, there are global phenomena that are the irreducible result of local interactions between components whose individual study would not allow us to see the global properties of the whole combined system. Thus, a growing number of researchers think that many properties of language are not directly encoded by any of the components involved, but are the self-organized outcomes of the interactions of the components.Building mathematical models in the context of research into language origins and the evolution of languages is enjoying growing popularity in the scientific community, because it is a crucial tool for studying the phenomena of language in relation to the complex interactions of its components. These systems are put to two main types of use: 1) they serve to evaluate the internal coherence of verbally expressed theories already proposed by clarifying all their hypotheses and verifying that they do indeed lead to the proposed conclusions ; 2) they serve to explore and generate new theories, which themselves often appear when one simply tries to build an artificial system reproducing the verbal behavior of humans.
Therefore, constructing operational models to test hypothesis in linguistics is gaining popularity these days. An operational model is one which defines the set of its assumptions explicitly and above all shows how to calculate their consequences, that is, to prove that they lead to a certain set of conclusions.
In the emergence of language
The emergence of language in the human species has been described in a game-theoretic framework based on a model of senders and receivers of information (Clark 2009, following Skyrms 2004). The evolution of certain properties of language such as inferenceInference
Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true. The conclusion drawn is also called an idiomatic. The laws of valid inference are studied in the field of logic.Human inference Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions...
follow from this sort of framework (with the parameters stating that information transmitted can be partial or redundant, and the underlying assumption that the sender and receiver each want to take the action in his/her best interest). Likewise, models have shown that compositionality, a central component of human language, emerges dynamically during linguistic evolution, and need not be introduced by biological evolution (Kirby 2000). Tomasello (1999) argues that through one evolutionary step, the ability to sustain culture, the groundwork for the evolution of human language was laid. The ability to ratchet cultural advances cumulatively allowed for the complex development of human cognition unseen in other animals.
In language acquisition
Within a species' ontogenyOntogeny
Ontogeny is the origin and the development of an organism – for example: from the fertilized egg to mature form. It covers in essence, the study of an organism's lifespan...
, the acquisition of language has also been shown to self-organize. Through the ability to see others as intentional agents (theory of mind), and actions such as 'joint attention
Joint attention
Joint attention is interactionally-achieved when one person, animal or agent alerts another to a stimulus by means of eye-gazing, finger-pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indication....
,' human children have the scaffolding they need to learn the language of those around them (Tomasello 1999).
In articulatory phonology
Articulatory phonologyPhonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
takes the approach that speech production consists of a coordinated series of gestures, called 'constellations,' which are themselves dynamical systems. In this theory, linguistic contrast comes from the distinction between such gestural units, which can be described on a low-dimensional level in the abstract. However, these structures are necessarily context-dependent in real-time production. Thus the context-dependence emerges naturally from the dynamical systems themselves. This statement is controversial, however, as it suggests a universal phonetics which is not evident across languages. Cross-linguistic patterns show that what can be treated as the same gestural units produce different contextualised patterns in different languages. Articulatory Phonology fails to attend to the acoustic output of the gestures themselves (meaning that many typological patterns remain unexplained). Freedom among listeners in the weighting of perceptual cues in the acoustic signal has a more fundamental role to play in the emergence of structure. The realization of the perceptual contrasts by means of articulatory movements means that articulatory considerations do play a role, but these are purely secondary.
In diachrony and synchrony
Several mathematical models of language change rely on self-organizing or dynamical systems. Abrams and Strogatz (2003) produced a model of language change that focused on “language deathLanguage death
In linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety...
” - the process by which a speech community merges into the surrounding speech communities. Nakamura et al. (2008) proposed a variant of this model that incorporates spatial dynamics into language contact transactions in order to describe the emergence of creoles. Both of these models proceed from the assumption that language change, like any self-organizing system, is a large-scale act or entity (in this case the creation or death of a language, or changes in its boundaries) that emerges from many actions on a micro-level. The microlevel in this example is the everyday production and comprehension of language by speakers in areas of language contact.
Self-organization in traffic flow
The self-organizing behaviour of drivers in traffic flowTraffic flow
Traffic flow, in mathematics and civil engineering, is the study of interactions between vehicles, drivers, and infrastructure , with the aim of understanding and developing an optimal road network with efficient movement of traffic and minimal traffic congestion problems.-History:Attempts to...
determines almost all traffic spatiotemporal phenomena observed in real traffic data like traffic breakdown at a highway bottleneck, highway capacity, the emergence of moving traffic jams, etc. Self-organization in traffic flow is extremely complex spatiotemporal dynamic process. For this reason, only in 1996-2002 spatiotemporal self-organization effects in traffic have been understood in real measured traffic data and explained by Boris Kerner
Boris Kerner
Boris S. Kerner is the pioneer of the much-discussed three-phase traffic theory.- Life and work :Boris S. Kerner is a leading expert in intelligent transportation systems and in the theory of pattern formation in dissipative physical, chemical, biological systems. He was born in Moscow, Soviet...
’s three-phase traffic theory.
See also
- BiologyBiologyBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
concepts: Bow tie (biology)Bow tie (biology)The term bow tie refers in science to a recent concept that tries to grasp the essence of some operational and functional structures observed in biological organisms and other kinds of complex and self-organizing systems...
- evolutionEvolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
- morphogenesisMorphogenesisMorphogenesis , is the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape...
- homeostasisHomeostasisHomeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
- Gaia HypothesisGaia hypothesisThe Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the... - ChemistryChemistryChemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
concepts: reaction-diffusion - autocatalysisAutocatalysisA single chemical reaction is said to have undergone autocatalysis, or be autocatalytic, if the reaction product itself is the catalyst for that reaction.... - Complex systemComplex systemA complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties not obvious from the properties of the individual parts....
s concepts: emergenceEmergenceIn philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
- evolutionary computationEvolutionary computationIn computer science, evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence that involves combinatorial optimization problems....
- artificial lifeArtificial lifeArtificial life is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986...
- self-organized criticalitySelf-organized criticalityIn physics, self-organized criticality is a property of dynamical systems which have a critical point as an attractor. Their macroscopic behaviour thus displays the spatial and/or temporal scale-invariance characteristic of the critical point of a phase transition, but without the need to tune...
- "edge of chaosEdge of chaosThe phrase edge of chaos was coined by mathematician Doyne Farmer to describe the transition phenomenon discovered by computer scientist Christopher Langton. The phrase originally refers to an area in the range of a variable, λ , which was varied while examining the behavior of a cellular automaton...
" - spontaneous orderSpontaneous orderSpontaneous order, also known as "self-organization", is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos. It is a process found in physical, biological, and social networks, as well as economics, though the term "self-organization" is more often used for physical and biological processes,...
- metastabilityMetastabilityMetastability describes the extended duration of certain equilibria acquired by complex systems when leaving their most stable state after an external action....
- Chaos theoryChaos theoryChaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
- Butterfly effectButterfly effectIn chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state... - Computer scienceComputer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
concepts: swarm intelligenceSwarm intelligenceSwarm intelligence is the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence... - Constructal law
- Information theoryInformation theoryInformation theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
- MathematicsMathematicsMathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
concepts: fractalFractalA fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity...
- random graphRandom graphIn mathematics, a random graph is a graph that is generated by some random process. The theory of random graphs lies at the intersection between graph theory and probability theory, and studies the properties of typical random graphs.-Random graph models:...
- power lawPower lawA power law is a special kind of mathematical relationship between two quantities. When the frequency of an event varies as a power of some attribute of that event , the frequency is said to follow a power law. For instance, the number of cities having a certain population size is found to vary...
- small world phenomenon - cellular automataCellular automatonA cellular automaton is a discrete model studied in computability theory, mathematics, physics, complexity science, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling. It consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as "On" and "Off"... - Organization of the artistOrganization of the artistThe organization of the artist is a concept devised by architect Frank Gehry and first used in writing by Oxford University professor Bent Flyvbjerg in 2005 in Harvard Design Magazine. The term denotes the organizational set-up Gehry enforces when his designs are being built to avoid subordination...
- Philosophical concepts: tectologyTectologyTectology is a term used by Alexander Bogdanov to describe a discipline that consisted of unifying all social, biological and physical sciences, by considering them as systems of relationships, and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems...
- PhysicsPhysicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
concepts: thermodynamicsThermodynamicsThermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...
- non-equilibrium thermodynamicsNon-equilibrium thermodynamicsNon-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Most systems found in nature are not in thermodynamic equilibrium; for they are changing or can be triggered to change over time, and are continuously and discontinuously...
- constructal theoryConstructal theoryThe constructal law puts forth the idea that the generation of design in nature is a physics phenomenon that unites all animate and inanimate systems, and that this phenomenon is covered by the Constructal Law...
- statistical mechanicsStatistical mechanicsStatistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...
- phase transitionPhase transitionA phase transition is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase or state of matter to another.A phase of a thermodynamic system and the states of matter have uniform physical properties....
- dissipative structures - turbulenceTurbulenceIn fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is a flow regime characterized by chaotic and stochastic property changes. This includes low momentum diffusion, high momentum convection, and rapid variation of pressure and velocity in space and time... - SocialSocialThe term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...
concepts: participatory organizationParticipatory organizationparticipatory organization is an organization which is built based on people participation rather than their contract obligations.Most current organizations are contract-based. Contracts define a functional structure that holds such an organization together by imposing mutual obligations on people... - Spontaneous orderSpontaneous orderSpontaneous order, also known as "self-organization", is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos. It is a process found in physical, biological, and social networks, as well as economics, though the term "self-organization" is more often used for physical and biological processes,...
- StigmergyStigmergyStigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent...
- Systems theorySystems theorySystems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
concepts: cyberneticsCyberneticsCybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
- autopoiesis - polytelyPolytelyPolytely can be described as frequently, complex problem-solving situations characterized by the presence of not one, but several goals, endings.Modern societies face an increasing incidence of various complex problems... - Santiago theory of cognitionSantiago Theory of CognitionBiologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela contributed their Santiago theory of cognition in which they wrote:Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition...
- AnarchismAnarchismAnarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
- Anarcho-CapitalismAnarcho-capitalismAnarcho-capitalism is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favour of individual sovereignty in a free market... - LanguageLanguageLanguage may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
- Operator GrammarOperator GrammarOperator Grammar is a mathematical theory of human language that explains how language carries information. This theory is the culmination of the life work of Zellig Harris, with major publications toward the end of the last century... - Ant millAnt millAn ant mill is an observed phenomenon in which a group of army ants separated from the main foraging party lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle. The ants will eventually die of exhaustion. This has been reproduced in laboratories and the...
Further reading
- W. Ross Ashby (1966), Design for a Brain, Chapman & Hall, 2nd edition.
- Amoroso, Richard (2005) The Fundamental Limit and Origin of Complexity in Biological Systems http://www.mindspring.com/~noetic.advanced.studies/Amoroso1.pdf.
- Per BakPer BakPer Bak was a Danish theoretical physicist who coauthored the 1987 academic paper that coined the term "self-organized criticality."- Life and work :...
(1996), How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality, Copernicus Books. - Philip Ball (1999), The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature, Oxford University Press.
- Stafford Beer, Self-organization as autonomyAutonomyAutonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...
: Brain of the Firm 2nd edition Wiley 1981 and Beyond Dispute Wiley 1994. - A. Bejan (2000), Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 324 pp.
- Mark Buchanan (2002), Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks W. W. Norton & Company.
- Scott Camazine, Jean-Louis Deneubourg, Nigel R. Franks, James Sneyd, Guy Theraulaz, & Eric Bonabeau (2001) Self-Organization in Biological Systems, Princeton Univ Press.
- Falko Dressler (2007), Self-Organization in Sensor and Actor Networks, Wiley & Sons.
- Manfred EigenManfred EigenManfred Eigen is a German biophysical chemist who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on measuring fast chemical reactions.-Career:...
and Peter SchusterPeter SchusterPeter K. Schuster is a renowned theoretical chemist, known for his work with the German Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen in developing the quasispecies model...
(1979), The Hypercycle: A principle of natural self-organization, Springer. - Myrna Estep (2003), A Theory of Immediate Awareness: Self-Organization and Adaptation in Natural Intelligence, Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- Myrna L. Estep (2006), Self-Organizing Natural Intelligence: Issues of Knowing, Meaning, and Complexity, Springer-Verlag.
- J. Doyne FarmerJ. Doyne FarmerJ. Doyne Farmer is an American physicist and entrepreneur, with interest in chaos theory and complexity. He is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He was also a member of Eudaemonic Enterprises.-Biography:...
et al. (editors) (1986), "Evolution, Games, and Learning: Models for Adaptation in Machines and Nature", in: Physica D, Vol 22. - Heinz von FoersterHeinz von FoersterHeinz von Foerster was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy. Together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Lawrence J. Fogel, and others, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of cybernetics.-Biography:Von Foerster was born in 1911 in Vienna, Austria,...
and George W. Zopf, Jr. (eds.) (1962), Principles of Self-Organization (Sponsored by Information Systems Branch, U.S. Office of Naval Research. - Carlos Gershenson and Francis HeylighenFrancis HeylighenFrancis Paul Heylighen is a Belgian cyberneticist, and research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking Free University of Brussels, where he directs the transdisciplinary research group on "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition".-Biography:Francis Heylighen was born on...
(2003). "When Can we Call a System Self-organizing?" In Banzhaf, W, T. Christaller, P. Dittrich, J. T. Kim, and J. Ziegler, Advances in Artificial Life, 7th European Conference, ECAL 2003, Dortmund, Germany, pp. 606–614. LNAI 2801. Springer. - Hermann HakenHermann HakenHermann Haken is physicist and professor emeritus in theoretical physics at the University of Stuttgart. He is known as the founder of synergetics....
(1983) Synergetics: An Introduction. Nonequilibrium Phase Transition and Self-Organization in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, Third Revised and Enlarged Edition, Springer-Verlag. - F.A. Hayek Law, Legislation and Liberty, RKP, UK.
- Francis HeylighenFrancis HeylighenFrancis Paul Heylighen is a Belgian cyberneticist, and research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking Free University of Brussels, where he directs the transdisciplinary research group on "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition".-Biography:Francis Heylighen was born on...
(2001): "The Science of Self-organization and Adaptivity". - Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen (1998), Self-Organized Criticality: Emergent Complex Behaviour in Physical and Biological Systems, Cambridge Lecture Notes in Physics 10, Cambridge University Press.
- Steven Berlin JohnsonSteven Berlin JohnsonSteven Berlin Johnson is an American popular science author.-Education:Steven Johnson attended the prestigious St. Albans School as a youth. He completed his undergraduate degree at Brown University, where he studied semiotics, a part of Brown's modern culture and media department...
(2001), Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. - Stuart KauffmanStuart KauffmanStuart Alan Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth...
(1995), At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press. - Stuart KauffmanStuart KauffmanStuart Alan Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth...
(1993), Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution Oxford University Press. - J. A. Scott KelsoJ. A. Scott KelsoJ. A. Scott Kelso is a neuroscientist, and Professor of Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Professor of Psychology, Biological Sciences and Biomedical Science at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida and The University of Ulster in Derry, N...
(1995), Dynamic Patterns: The self-organization of brain and behavior, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. - J. A. Scott KelsoJ. A. Scott KelsoJ. A. Scott Kelso is a neuroscientist, and Professor of Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Professor of Psychology, Biological Sciences and Biomedical Science at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida and The University of Ulster in Derry, N...
& David A Engstrom (2006), "The Complementary Nature", The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. - Alex Kentsis (2004), Self-organization of biological systems: Protein folding and supramolecular assembly, Ph.D. Thesis, New York University.
- E.V.Krishnamurthy(2009)," Multiset of Agents in a Network for Simulation of Complex Systems", in "Recent advances in Nonlinear Dynamics and synchronization, ,(NDS-1) -Theory and applications, Springer Verlag, New York,2009. Eds. K.Kyamakya et al.
- Paul KrugmanPaul KrugmanPaul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...
(1996), The Self-Organizing Economy, Cambridge, Mass., and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. - Niklas LuhmannNiklas LuhmannNiklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, and a prominent thinker in sociological systems theory.-Biography:...
(1995) Social Systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. - Elizabeth McMillan (2004) "Complexity, Organizations and Change".
- Marshall, A (2002) The Unity of Nature, Imperial College Press: London (esp. chapter 5)
- Müller, J.-A., Lemke, F. (2000), Self-Organizing Data Mining.
- Gregoire Nicolis and Ilya PrigogineIlya PrigogineIlya, Viscount Prigogine was a Russian-born naturalized Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.-Biography :...
(1977) Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems, Wiley. - Heinz PagelsHeinz PagelsHeinz Rudolf Pagels was an American physicist, an adjunct professor of physics at Rockefeller University, the executive director and chief executive officer of the New York Academy of Sciences, and president of the International League for Human Rights...
(1988), The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity, Simon & Schuster. - Gordon PaskGordon PaskAndrew Gordon Speedie Pask was an English cybernetician and psychologist who made significant contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and educational technology....
(1961), The cybernetics of evolutionary processes and of self organizing systems, 3rd. International Congress on Cybernetics, Namur, Association Internationale de Cybernetique. - Gordon Pask (1993) Interactions of Actors (IA), Theory and Some Applications, Download incomplete 90 page manuscript.
- Gordon Pask (1996) Heinz von Foerster's Self-Organisation, the Progenitor of Conversation and Interaction Theories, Systems Research (1996) 13, 3, pp. 349–362
- Christian Prehofer ea. (2005), "Self-Organization in Communication Networks: Principles and Design Paradigms", in: IEEE Communications Magazine, July 2005.
- Mitchell Resnick (1994), Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds, Complex Adaptive Systems series, MIT Press.
- Lee SmolinLee SmolinLee Smolin is an American theoretical physicist, a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo. He is married to Dina Graser, a communications lawyer in Toronto. His brother is David M...
(1997), The Life of the Cosmos Oxford University Press. - Ricard V. Solé and Brian C. Goodwin (2001), Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology, Basic Books.
- Ricard V. Solé and Jordi Bascompte (2006), Selforganization in Complex Ecosystems, Princeton U. Press
- Steven Strogatz (2004), Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, Theia.
- D'Arcy Thompson (1917), On Growth and Form, Cambridge University Press, 1992 Dover Publications edition.
- Norbert WienerNorbert WienerNorbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
(1962), The mathematics of self-organising systems. Recent developments in information and decision processes, Macmillan, N. Y. and Chapter X in Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine, The MIT Press, 2nd Edition 1962 - Tom De Wolf, Tom Holvoet (2005), Emergence Versus Self-Organisation: Different Concepts but Promising When Combined, In Engineering Self Organising Systems: Methodologies and Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 3464, pp 1–15.
- K. Yee (2003), "Ownership and Trade from Evolutionary Games," International Review of Law and Economics, 23.2, 183-197.
- Louise B. Young (2002), The Unfinished Universe
- Mikhail Prokopenko (ed.) (2008), Advances in Applied Self-organizing Systems, Springer.
- Alfred Hübler (2009), "Digital wires," Complexity, 14.5,7–9,
External links
- Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization, Göttingen
- PDF file on self-organized common law with references
- An entry on self-organization at the Principia Cybernetica site
- The Science of Self-organization and Adaptivity, a review paper by Francis HeylighenFrancis HeylighenFrancis Paul Heylighen is a Belgian cyberneticist, and research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking Free University of Brussels, where he directs the transdisciplinary research group on "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition".-Biography:Francis Heylighen was born on...
- The Self-Organizing Systems (SOS) FAQ by Chris Lucas, from the [news://comp.theory.self-org-sys USENET newsgroup comp.theory.self-org.sys]
- David Griffeath, Primordial Soup Kitchen (graphics, papers)
- nlin.AO, nonlinear preprint archive, (electronic preprints in adaptation and self-organizing systems)
- Structure and Dynamics of Organic Nanostructures
- Metal organic coordination networks of oligopyridines and Cu on graphite
- in complex networks The Complex Systems Lab, Barcelona
- models for self organization and biological systems Center for Models of Life, Niels Bohr Institute.
- Computational Mechanics Group at the Santa Fe InstituteSanta Fe InstituteThe Santa Fe Institute is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems.The Institute houses a...
- "Organisation must grow" (1939) W. Ross Ashby journal page 759, from The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive
- Cosma Shalizi's notebook on self-organization from 2003-06-20, used under the GFDLGNU Free Documentation LicenseThe GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
with permission from author. - Connectivism:SelfOrganization
- UCLA Human Complex Systems Program
- "Interactions of Actors (IA), Theory and Some Applications" 1993 Gordon Pask's theory of learning, evolution and self-organization (in draft).
- "Heinz von Foerster's Self-Organisation, the Progenitor of Conversation and Interaction Theories" Gordon Pask Systems Research vol.13 pp349–362 1996
- The Cybernetics Society
- Scott Camazine's webpage on self-organization in biological systems
- Mikhail Prokopenko's page on Information-driven Self-organisation (IDSO)
- Lakeside Labs Self-Organizing Networked Systems A platform for science and technology, Klagenfurt, Austria.
Dissertations and Theses on Self-organization