Hi, everybody,
The term “self-organizing” has always seemed a mis-nomer, almost an oxymoron. In that connection, I took an interest in the following quote from Mary Jane West-Eberhardt’s enormous, DEVELOPMENTAL PLASTICITY AND EVOLUTION. (p. 59, bottom of column one)
Extreme modular flexibility is found in the mechanisms sometimes called self-organizing (refs to Kauffman, Gerhart and Kirschner) In seolf organization, the phenotype does not really organize itself. Rather, organization is highly flexible and locally responsive because a large number of modular subunits respond individually to local conditions according to simple, shared decision rules.
I wonder what you complexity folks think about this as a general and comprehensive characterization of the phenomena you have called “self-organizing”?
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
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