Self-organization
Self-Organization explains how distributed systems with independently acting parts and no central controller or designer can spontaneously form highly complex, organized systems.
Emergent Properties represent attractors within a complex system, where unique patterns and new behaviors are seen at the systems level. For examle, the behavior of a colony is emergent from the behavior of ants. It is often useful to describe the colony as a holistic entity with its own agency, even though it's just a bunch of ants. Consciousness is similar, but with neurons.
This is an important topic that is a necessary prerequisite to the full understanding of creation, evolution, fractals, nature, societies, economics, spirituality, the universe, and pretty much everything. It shows that complexity is inevitable rather than unlikely. Complex order is an intrinsic part of the universe, not something unique to intelligent beings.
Unfortunately, our current education curriculums rarely introduce this topic to anyone that isn't in a college science program. And even then, its fundamental role in the understanding of nearly everything is not sufficiently emphasized.
Related Concepts
Self-Similarity, self-correction, self-replication, generating equation, recursion, and feedback loops are key related concepts, and more can be found on those pages.
There are a number of related subjects on Wikipedia that contribute to our understanding of self-organizing, complex systems.
- Self-Organization
- Fractals
- Complex System
- Complex Adaptive System
- Feedback Loops
- Emergence
- Attractor
- Chaos Theory
- Complexity Theory
- Systems Theory
- Game Theory
Since these concepts aren't explained in detail on this wikil, it is important to familiarize yourself with them via books, podcasts, videos, and other educational resources. There is always better source material than the wiki text for learning the basic science. The goal of the wiki is to put these concepts together in a holistic metanarrative and theory of everything.
Cosmic Complexification
These concepts are key to a modern understanding of the intersection between science and religion.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was the first to propose this model of natural theology, where god is seen as the self-organizing, cosmic complexification process that drives the universe towards greater and greater levels of organization, against the tide of entropy.
Bobby Azarian's The Romance of Reality is the book with the most thorough presentation of the science behind this perspective, combining theories like Universal Darwinism, Information Theory, Cybernetics, and consciousness research. These authors are all contributing to this view as well.
Here's a brief TED-style talk on the topic.
A longer conversation.
This video lecture from the Faraday Institute also makes the case in detail: The Concept of Emergence in the Dialogue Between Science and Theology
Really there are thousands of thinkers who have used complexity and self-organization to explain holistic scientific and spiritual topics. Azarian takes the most comprehensive scientific approach to this perspective while avoiding the quantum woo and other pseudoscience that many secular gurus fall victim to.
Ineffable Complexity
Our lack of a theoretical framework for understanding complexity has always meant that these concepts were ineffable. There was no language to describe the way that large groups of independent agents self-organize into meta-entities with their own unique properties and behaviors. The concept of "spirit" was created to describe these phenomenon with allegory. The science of complexity theory now gives us the tools to describe them literally and mathematically, allowing us to finally eff the ineffable.
Of course, reality is infinitely complex, so it can never really be fully effed. See Gödel.
Self-Organized Music
This music didn't organize itself--someone had to do a Google search and copy a link. However, this was all part of the universe's complexification conversation with itself, just trying to get its shit together. Best to just dance a cosmic dance and have a laugh.