Self-organization and emergence

Let us start with the concept that is perhaps most important for lay people it may at first sight appear that once divine intervention is eliminated from the picture, nothing remains except molecules and their interactions to arrive at life. Of course, evolution and interactions with the environment are very important factors, and they can take the fancy form of self-organization and emergence. However, all these factors appear to be based on, or caused by, molecular interactions. In other words, at first sight the acceptance of the view expressed in Figure 1.1 is tantamount to stating that life consists only of molecules and of their interactions. 

Actually, this concept of self-organization and emergent properties as a collective ensemble, without an organized localized centre, is nowadays under scrutiny in cognitive sciences several scientists in the area would now agree that this... 

There are some signs in the modern life sciences literature to indicate a return to a system theory of life processes, which emphasize collective, integrating properties -such as self-organization and emergence. In this new - perhaps more philosophically - mature Zeitgeist, autopoiesis could re-emerge as a very useful conceptual framework. 

Crowding. The Dual Nature of Oxygen. Self-Organization and Emergence... 

Feltz, B. 2006. Self-Organization and Emergence in Life Sciences, Springer, New York, NY. 

The ability of XB to control recognition, self-organization, and self-assembly processes in the different phases of matter is clearly emerging in the literature. This chapter focusses on self-assembly in the solid phase, while the chapters of B. Duncan and A. Legon (in this volume) deal with the liquid crystalline phase and gas phase, respectively. Relatively few papers are reported in the literature on self-assembly processes in solution [66-68,207,208]. Several analytical techniques have been used to detect XB formation, to define its nature, to establish its energetic and geometric characteristics, and to reveal... 

The spontaneous emergence of order at critical points of instability is one of the most important concepts of the new understanding of life. It is technically known as self-organization and is often referred to simply as emergence . It has been recognized as the dynamic origin of development, learning and evolution. 

Eigen, M. and Schuster, P. (1977). Hypercycle - principle of natural self-organization. A. Emergence of hypercycle. Naturwissenschaften, 64, 541-65. 

Further developments involve sequential, hierarchical self-organization on an increasing scale, with emergence of novel features/properties at each level [3, 7], self-organization in space as well as in time [93] and passage beyond reversibility, towards evolutive chemistry involving self-organization and constitutional dynamics in non-equilibrium systems. 

It is evident that self-organization and the emergence of dissipative structures on a Liouvillian meso-macroscopic level seem to support the use of general Jordan forms. At the same time, on the microscopic domain, we have pointed out the possibility to model (i) particle-antiparticle pairs via... 

Abstract The combination of nanomaterials and ordered deformable soft materials is emerging as an enabling system in nanoscience and nanotechnology. In this context, nanomaterial functionalized photoresponsive liquid crystalline polymers are very promising and versatile systems due to their dynamic function. Moreover, the unique characteristic of nanomaterials combined with the mechanical, self-organizing and stimuli-responsive properties of deformable liquid crystalline polymers opens up new and exciting possibilities. In this chapter, we present recent developments of photodeformable behaviors of liquid crystalline polymers functionalized with nanomaterials. The main emphasis revolves around how the physicochemical properties of different nanomaterials modulate the reversible photomechanical behaviors of liquid crystalline polymers and their potential application in devices such as optically controlled switches and soft actuators. 

Such models can be developed for the computational design of catalytic sterns that self organize and adapt themselves for optimum catalytic performance. Adaptation occurs in the reproduction process with mutation of the self-replicating molecules coupled to the metabolic system. The metabolic system acts as the bio-immune molecular recognition and response system. The conditions for the emergence of such a stem are far from equilibrium in the complex regime. The behavior as a function of time is unpredictable, similar to the class 4 system proposed by Wolfram. 

H. J. Jensen. Self-Organized Criticality Emergent Complex Behavior in Physical and Biological Systems. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. (1998). 

Explore tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized comm and-and-control (C2) structures Are some C2 topologies more conducive to information flow and attainment of mission objectives than others What do emergent forms of a self-organized C2 topology look like ... 

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