Self-organization

Abstract

Self-organization is an inherent process of life and society that refers to the capability of biological, natural, and society systems to change their structure by their own during their operation, such as to show more order or pattern without the help of external agents. This chapter starts with the ontological question “what is self-organization” and provides representative alternative answers given by eminent workers and thinkers in the field. It continues by discussing the four fundamental mechanisms of self-organization observed in nature viz. synergetics, export of entropy, positive/negative feedback interplay, and selective retention, followed by an examination of the concept of self-organized criticality (edge of chaos). Then, this chapter discusses the contribution of cybernetics to the study of self-organization, and the relation of self-organization with “complex adaptive systems (CAS)” providing a description of five self-organization features that are transferred to CASs. This chapter continues with the presentation of six examples of natural and artificial self-organizing systems, namely ecological systems, magnetization, convective instability cells, linguistic systems, knowledge networks, and self-organizing neural network maps. The conclusions provide some additional remarks about complexity and the future of man-made self-organizing systems.