On the Nature of Coordination in Nature

Abstract

Aiming to identify general principles governing collective behavior at multiple levels, we visit complex systems whose dynamic patterns traverse neural, behavioral, and social levels. Rather than approaching such systems from their distinct scientific perspectives, e.g., neuroscience, psychology, or sociology, we unite them in the study of their coordination dynamics. A study of multiple people coordinating their behavior, dubbed “the human fireflies experiment,” reveals spatiotemporal metastability. Another study of real fireflies, often taken as the poster child for strong synchronization, also reveals a telltale spatiotemporal mixture of integration and segregation, as had an earlier investigation into the coordination of neural ensembles. Empirical data is contextualized with a theoretical model of coordination dynamics and confirms its prediction that weak coupling and broken symmetry play key roles. We conclude that nature, in all its diversity and uninterested in subsuming itself to the simpler organizing phenomena favored by scientists, such as synchronization, in fact revels in spatiotemporal metastability.