Self-Organizing Systems: The Emergence of Order

Technological systems become organized by commands from outside, as when human intentions lead to the building of structures or machines. But many nat­ ural systems become structured by their own internal processes: these are the self­ organizing systems, and the emergence of order within them is a complex phenomenon that intrigues scientists from all disciplines. Unfortunately, complexity is ill-defined. Global explanatory constructs, such as cybernetics or general systems theory, which we...