On the coordination dynamics of (animate) moving bodies

Abstract

Coordination comes in many guises and represents one of the most striking, but least understood features of living things. The different forms that coordination takes and how it emerges and changes are of great interest to many disciplines, particularly the social and behavioral sciences, neuroscience, psychology, biology and physics itself. Inspired originally by theories of self-organization in open, nonequilibrium systems, the science of coordination (coordination dynamics) seeks to understand coordinated patterns at many scales and for multiple functions in living things. Here we review some of the key concepts of coordination dynamics along with some recent developments and posit ten tenets of the theory that may guide further understanding.