Self organisation

According to Erich Jantsch, self-organisation is the dynamic principle behind the emergence of the rich world of biological, ecological, societal and cultural structures (Jantsch, 1980). As can be seen from the definition, self-organisation processes are highly complex. They can include  

It is often helpful to take a brief look back at aspects of the history of science in order to make complex topics easier to grasp. The history of physics can be divided into three phases  

The second includes the introduction of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics in the first decades of the twentieth century. 

The history of science will see the third phase as the physics of complexity . 

According to Galilei, the observation of natural phenomena using suitable measuring instruments provides certain numerical values which must be related to one another the solution of the equations derived from the numbers allows us to forecast future developments. This led to the misunderstanding that knowledge could only be obtained in such a manner. The result was deterministic belief, which was disproved for microscopic objects by Heisenberg s uncertainty principle. On the macroscopic scale, however, it appeared that the deterministic approach was still valid. Determinism was only finally buried when deterministic chaos was discovered. 

---

Fig. 6. Snapshot from a dynamic density functional simulation of the self-organisation of the block copolymer PL64 (containing 30 propylene oxide rmd 26 ethylene oxide units (EO)i3(PO)3o(EO)i3) in 70% aqueous solution. The simulation was carried out during 6250 time steps on a 64 x 64 x 64 grid (courtesy of B.A.C. van Vlimmeren and J.G.E.M. Praaije, Groningen).

The method has severe limitations for systems where gradients on near-atomic scale are important (as in the protein folding process or in bilayer membranes that contain only two molecules in a separated phase), but is extremely powerful for (co)polymer mixtures and solutions [147, 148, 149]. As an example Fig. 6 gives a snapshot in the process of self-organisation of a polypropylene oxide-ethylene oxide copolymer PL64 in aqueous solution on its way from a completely homogeneous initial distribution to a hexagonal structure. 

G. Melt2 and W. W. Morey, "Bragg Grating Formation and GermanosiHcate Fiber Photosensitivity," Proceedings of the SPIE Workshop of on Photoinduced Self-Organisation in OpticalPiber May 10—11, 1991, SPIE, Quebec City, Canada, pp. 185—189. 

Polkinghorne, M.N. (1994) A Self-Organising Fuzzy Logic Autopilot for Small Vessels, PhD Thesis, School of Manufacturing, Materials and Mechanical Engineering, University of Plymouth, UK. 

Sutton, R. and Jess, I.M. (1991) A Design Study of a Self-Organising Fuzzy Autopilot for Ship Control. In IMechE, Proc. Instn. Mech. Engrs., 205, pp. 35-47. 

Keeley, F.W., Bellingham, C.M., and Woodhouse, K.A., Elastin as a self-organising biomaterial Use of recombinantly expressed human elastin polypeptides as a model system for investigations of structure and self-assembly of elastin, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci., 357, 185-189, 2002. 

Kohonen T. Self-organisation and associative memory. Berlin Springer-Verlag, 1989. 

Fig. 10 Self-organisation of Ni-Fe nanoparticles on a carbon substrate (1) multi-layers (2) mono-layer.

Tschierske, C. (1998) Non-conventional liquid crystals - the importance of micro-segregation for self-organisation. Journal of Materials Chemistry, 8,1485-1508. 

M. Mulholland, D.B. Hibbert, P.R. Haddad and P. Parslov, A comparison of classification in artificial intelligence, induction versus a self-organising neural networks. Chemom. Intell. Lab. Systems, 30 (1995) 117-128. 

W. J. Meissen, J.R.M. Smits, G.H. Rolf and G. Kateman,Two-dimensional mapping of IR spectra using a parallel implemented self-organising feature map. Chemom. Intell. Lab. Syst., 18(1993) 195-204. 

Laschewsky, AMolecular Concepts, Self-Organisation and Properties of Polysoaps. Vol. 124,... 

Goodacre, R. Howell, S. A. Noble, W. C. Neal, M. J. Sub-species discrimination using pyrolysis mass spectrometry and self-organising neural networks of Propionibacterium acnes isolated from normal human skin. Zbl. Bakt.-Int. J. Med. Microbiol. Virol. Parasitol. Infect. Dis. 1996,284, 501-515. 

Cartwright, H.M., Investigation of structure-biodegradability relationships in polychlorinated biphenyls using self-organising maps, Neural Comput. Apps., 11, 30, 2002. 

Hazen and Deamer looked at the chemical and physical properties of the end products of hypothetical prebiotic reactions carried out under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature, for example in CCh-rich regions of hydrothermal vents. The results of laboratory experiments indicate that prebiotic syntheses leading to a variety of products could have occurred in hydrothermal systems some of these have amphiphilic properties, and would have been capable of self-organisation processes. 

The authors chose pyruvic acid as their model compound this C3 molecule plays a central role in the metabolism of living cells. It was recently synthesized for the first time under hydrothermal conditions (Cody et al., 2000). Hazen and Deamer carried out their experiments at pressures and temperatures similar to those in hydrothermal systems (but not chosen to simulate such systems). The non-enzymatic reactions, which took place in relatively concentrated aqueous solutions, were intended to identify the subsequent self-selection and self-organisation potential of prebiotic molecular species. A considerable series of complex organic molecules was tentatively identified, such as methoxy- or methyl-substituted methyl benzoates or 2, 3, 4-trimethyl-2-cyclopenten-l-one, to name only a few. In particular, polymerisation products of pyruvic acid, and products of consecutive reactions such as decarboxylation and cycloaddition, were observed the expected tar fraction was not found, but water-soluble components were found as well as a chloroform-soluble fraction. The latter showed similarities to chloroform-soluble compounds from the Murchison carbonaceous chondrite (Hazen and Deamer, 2007). 

Self-organisation of macromolecules to give functioning, self-reproducing units,... 

Eigen s theory describes the self-organisation of biological macromolecules on the basis of kinetic considerations and mathematical formulations, which are in turn based on the thermodynamics of irreversible systems. Evolutionary processes are irreversibly linked to the flow of time. Classical thermodynamics alone cannot describe them but must be extended to include irreversible processes, which take account of the arrow of time (see Sect. 9.2). Eigen s theory is based on two vital concepts ... 

Hans Kuhn, who described his own models in an article on the Self-organisation of Molecular Systems and the Evolution of the Genetic Apparatus (Kuhn, 1972), also worked in the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen. Eigen... 

Cycle 3 this is the membrane growth cycle. The starting material for the outer envelope of the system comes from cycle 1 and is capable of self-organisation processes which lead to the membrane (T. Ganti, 1997). 

Equilibrium thermodynamics was developed about 150 years ago. It is concerned only with the achievement of an equilibrium state, without taking into account the time which a system requires for the transition from an initial to a final state. Thus, only the thermodynamics of irreversible processes can be used to describe processes which lead to the formation of self-organising systems. Here, the time factor, and thus also the rate at which material reactions occur, is taken into account. Evolutionary processes are irreversibly coupled with temporal sequences, so that classical thermodynamics no longer suffices to describe them (Schuster and Sigmund, 1982). 

Self-organisation is a property of complex systems these are an important area of physics and have been studied intensively in the last few years. Since 1993, the Max Planck Society has had an institute for Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden. This is an interdisciplinary research area, dealing with problems which span the range from the cosmos to the living cell. 

As so often occurs in complex processes, the phenomenon of self-organisation... 

Self-organisation via inherent properties in this case, the self-organisation is determined by the properties of the particles forming it, such as base pairing in the DNA double helix, the formation of ice crystals, or RNase reconstruction (Fig. 9.4). 

Self-organisation in ontogenesis, i.e., the development of an individual organism from an ovum to the complete organism. 

Genuine self-organisation, i.e., self-organisation as a property of the system. Here, a system with a high degree of complexity organises itself under certain conditions. A typical example is Eigen s hypercycle model (see Sect. 8.3). 

Self-organisation as a physical principle since the big bang , self-organisation is considered to be a physical attribute of matter. 

Dissipative self-organisation, for example in evolving systems. 

Systems with dissipative self-organisation are important for processes which lead to biogenesis. These are open systems, the internal state of which is dominated by a disequilibrium far away from the equilibrium state. 

Here are some examples of chemical and biochemical self-organisation processes ... 

---