Overview
Self-organization is realizedGlansdorff, P., Prigogine, I. (1971).Principles
The cybernetician William Ross Ashby formulated the original principle of self-organization in 1947. It states that any deterministic dynamic system automatically evolves towards a state of equilibrium that can be described in terms of an attractor in a Attractor, basin of surrounding states. Once there, the further evolution of the system is constrained to remain in the attractor. This constraint implies a form of mutual dependency or coordination between its constituent components or subsystems. In Ashby's terms, each subsystem has adapted to the environment formed by all other subsystems. The cybernetician Heinz von Foerster formulated the principle of "order and disorder, order from noise (signal processing), noise" in 1960. It notes that self-organization is facilitated by random perturbations ("noise") that let the system explore a variety of states in its state space. This increases the chance that the system will arrive into the basin of a "strong" or "deep" attractor, from which it then quickly enters the attractor itself. The biophysicist Henri Atlan developed this concept by proposing the principle of "complexity from noise" (french: le principe de complexité par le bruit) first in the 1972 book ''L'organisation biologique et la théorie de l'information'' and then in the 1979 book ''Entre le cristal et la fumée''. The physicist and chemist Ilya Prigogine formulated a similar principle as "order through fluctuations" or "order out of chaos". It is applied in the method of simulated annealing for problem solving and machine learning.History
The idea that the Dynamics (mechanics), dynamics of a system can lead to an increase in its organization has a long history. The ancient atomism, atomists such as Democritus and Lucretius believed that a designing intelligence is unnecessary to create order in nature, arguing that given enough time and space and matter, order emerges by itself. The philosopher René Descartes presents self-organization hypothetically in the fifth part of his 1637 ''Discourse on Method''. He elaborated on the idea in his unpublished work ''The World (Descartes), The World''. Immanuel Kant used the term "self-organizing" in his 1790 ''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. Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) and Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) discovered the second law of thermodynamics in the 19th century. It states that total entropy, sometimes understood as disorder, will always increase over time in an isolated system. This means that a system cannot spontaneously increase its order without an external relationship that decreases order elsewhere in the system (e.g. through consuming the low-entropy energy of a battery and diffusing high-entropy heat). 18th-century thinkers had sought to understand the "universal laws of form" to explain the observed forms of living organisms. This idea became associated with Lamarckism and fell into disrepute until the early 20th century, when D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948) attempted to revive it. The psychiatrist and engineer William Ross Ashby, W. Ross Ashby introduced the term "self-organizing" to contemporary science in 1947. It was taken up by the cyberneticians Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Anthony Stafford Beer, Stafford Beer; and von Foerster organized a conference on "The Principles of Self-Organization" at the University of Illinois' Allerton Park in June, 1960 which led to a series of conferences on Self-Organizing Systems. Norbert Wiener took up the idea in the second edition of his ''Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine'' (1961). Self-organization was associated with systems theory, general systems theory in the 1960s, but did not become commonplace in the scientific literature until physicists Synergetics (Haken), Hermann Haken et al. and complex systems researchers adopted it in a greater picture from cosmology Erich Jantsch#The Self-Organizing Universe, 1979, Erich Jantsch, chemistry with dissipative system, biology and sociology as autopoiesis to system thinking in the following 1980s (Santa Fe Institute) and 1990s (complex adaptive system), until our days with the disruptive emerging technologies profounded by a Rhizome (philosophy), rhizomatic network theory. Around 2008-2009, a concept of guided self-organization started to take shape. This approach aims to regulate self-organization for specific purposes, so that a dynamical system may reach specific attractors or outcomes. The regulation constrains a self-organizing process within a complex system by restricting local interactions between the system components, rather than following an explicit control mechanism or a global design blueprint. The desired outcomes, such as increases in the resultant internal structure and/or functionality, are achieved by combining task-independent global objectives with task-dependent constraints on local interactions.By field
Physics
The many self-organizing phenomena in physics include phase transitions and spontaneous symmetry breaking such as spontaneous magnetization and crystal growth in classical physics, and the laser, superconductivity and Bose–Einstein condensation in quantum physics. It is found in self-organized criticality in dynamical systems, in tribology, in spin foam systems, and in loop quantum gravity, river basins and deltas, in dendritic solidification (snow flakes), in capillary imbibition and in turbulent structure.Chemistry
Biology
Cosmology
In his 1995 conference paper "Cosmology as a problem in critical phenomena" Lee Smolin said that several cosmological objects or phenomena, such as spiral galaxies, galaxy formation processes in general, Structure formation, early structure formation, quantum gravity and the large scale structure of the universe might be the result of or have involved certain degree of self-organization. He argues that self-organized systems are often critical systems, with structure spreading out in space and time over every available scale, as shown for example by Per Bak and his collaborators. Therefore, because the distribution of matter in the universe is more or less scale invariant over many orders of magnitude, ideas and strategies developed in the study of self-organized systems could be helpful in tackling certain Unsolved problems in astronomy, unsolved problems in cosmology and astrophysics.Computer science
Phenomena from mathematics and computer science such as cellular automaton, cellular automata, random graphs, 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 an active research area. Optimization algorithms can be considered self-organizing because they aim to find the optimal solution to a problem. If the solution is considered as a state of the iterative system, the optimal solution is the selected, converged structure of the system. Self-organizing networks include small-world networks self-stabilization and scale-free networks. These emerge from bottom-up interactions, unlike top-down hierarchical networks within organizations, which are not self-organizing. Cloud computing systems have been argued to be inherently self-organising, but while they have some autonomy, they are not self-managing as they do not have the goal of reducing their own complexity.Cybernetics
Norbert Wiener regarded the automatic serial System identification, identification of a black box and its subsequent reproduction as self-organization in cybernetics. The importance of phase locking or the "attraction of frequencies", as he called it, is discussed in the 2nd edition of his ''Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine''. K. Eric Drexler sees Molecular assembler, self-replication as a key step in nano and Universal assembler, universal assembly. By contrast, the four concurrently connected galvanometers of W. Ross Ashby's Homeostat Hunting oscillation, hunt, when perturbed, to converge on one of many possible stable states. Ashby used his state counting measure of variety (cybernetics), variety to describe stable states and produced the "Good Regulator" theorem which requires internal models for self-organized Endurantism, 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''/''H''max, 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 self-organization necessary for autonomy in persisting and living systems. He applied his 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), Homeostasis, 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 argued that von Foerster's H and Hmax were not independent, but Gordon Pask#Interactions of Actors Theory, interacted via Countable set, countably infinite recursive concurrent spin (physics), spin processes which he called concepts. 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 Gordon Pask#No Doppelgangers, No Doppelgangers" means no two concepts can be the same. After sufficient time, all concepts attract and coalesce as pink noise. The theory applies to all organizationally Closure (topology), closed or homeostatic processes that produce Endurantism, enduring and Coherence (physics), coherent products which evolve, learn and adapt.Human society
In learning
Enabling others to "learn how to learn" is often taken to mean instructing them how to submit to being taught. Self-organised learning (S.O.L.) denies that "the expert knows best" or that there is ever "the one best method", insisting instead on "the construction of personally significant, relevant and viable meaning" to be tested experientially by the learner. This may be collaborative, and more rewarding personally. It is seen as a lifelong process, not limited to specific learning environments (home, school, university) or under the control of authorities such as parents and professors. It needs to be tested, and intermittently revised, through the personal experience of the learner. It need not be restricted by either consciousness or language. Fritjof Capra argued that it is poorly recognised within psychology and education. It may be related to cybernetics as it involves a negative feedback control loop,Pask, G. (1973). ''Conversation, Cognition and Learning. A Cybernetic Theory and Methodology''. Elsevier or to systems theory. It can be conducted as a learning conversation or dialogue between learners or within one person.Traffic flow
The self-organizing behavior of drivers in traffic flow determines almost all the spatiotemporal behavior of traffic, such as traffic breakdown at a highway bottleneck, highway capacity, and the emergence of moving traffic jams. In 1996–2002 these complex self-organizing effects were explained by Boris Kerner's three-phase traffic theory.In linguistics
Order appears spontaneously in the linguistic evolution, evolution of language as individual and population behaviour interacts with biological evolution.In research funding
Self-organized funding allocation (SOFA) is a method of distributing Funding of science, funding for scientific research. In this system, each researcher is allocated an equal amount of funding, and is required to anonymously allocate a fraction of their funds to the research of others. Proponents of SOFA argue that it would result in similar distribution of funding as the present grant system, but with less overhead. In 2016, a test pilot of SOFA began in the Netherlands.Criticism
Heinz Pagels, in a 1985 review of Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers's book ''Order Out of Chaos'' in ''Physics Today'', appeals to authority: Of course, Blumenfeld does not answer the further question of how those program-like structures emerge in the first place. His explanation leads directly to infinite regress. In theology, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) in his ''Summa Theologica'' assumes a teleological created universe in rejecting the idea that something can be a self-sufficient cause of its own organization:See also
* Autopoiesis * Autowave * Self-organized criticality control * Free energy principle * Information theory * Constructal law * Swarm intelligenceNotes
References
Further reading
* W. Ross Ashby (1966), ''Design for a Brain'', Chapman & Hall, 2nd edition. * Per Bak (1996),External links
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