Reading on: Origin of the concept of emergence

Golden, Richard Self-Organizing Systems: a resource for teachers 1997 [770 words] — origin of the
concept of emergence

“The thing that hath been is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is
no new thing under the Sun.” Ecclesiastes

This cyclical worldview of the ancients was a natural extension of the observations of seasonal change and of
decay and regeneration. It was the dominant view in a world in which change was hard to recognize in an
individual lifetime. In such a world there is no progress.

A philosopher of the ancient world who did see change as part of existence was the historian Heraclitus (533-
475 BC). His maxim was, “You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon
you.” For him everything was becoming.

The idea that change can bring new things into the world was not the common point of view until the way was
prepared by the acceptance of Darwin’s theory of evolution. If evolution could, in time, bring new species into
being it was imaginable that the developing processes of the world had produced new and unexpected
arrangements of all kinds.

The first use of the word “emergent” to refer to phenomena that were new and not explicable by the properties
of their components was by George Henry Lewes (1817-1878). In his book Problems of Life and Mind (1879).
Lewes contrasts the word “emergent” with the word “resultant” and introduces the idea that it is through
emergence that novelties enter the world. He wrote that an emergent effect is not additive, not predictable from
knowledge of its components, and not decomposable into those components.

An early attempt to establish a philosophic interpretation of nature as a whole with emergence as one of its
guiding principles is the work of Samuel Alexander (1859-1938). Early on he accepted and incorporated the
idea of Minkowski and Einstein that space and time were not independent, that the only reality was space-time.
In Space, Time, and Deity (1920)he wrote:
“In the course of time new complexity of motions comes into existence, a new quality emerges, that is, a new
complex entity possesses as a matter of observed empirical fact a new or emergent quality... Physical and
chemical processes of a certain complexity have the quality of life... The higher quality emerges from the lower
level of existence and has its roots therein, but it emerges therefrom, and it... constitutes a new order of
existence with its special laws of behaviour… Mind is, according to our interpretation of the facts, an
‘emergent’ from life.”

In Samuel Alexander’s view, there were two fundamental concepts in the understanding of the universe. They
were space-time and the tendency of matter to move toward increasing complexity with new qualities, or
properties, emerging. This idea is at the heart of the concept of emergence.

A contemporary of Alexander, C. Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936), in Emergent Evolution (1928) expanded on the
idea of emergence. He saw at each step of increasing complexity of matter new relationships forming; new
ways of acting and reacting, new properties appearing. New because “their specific nature could not be
predicted before they appear in the evidence.” For an illustration he used the phase change of water to ice. In
Morgan’s view the lower density of ice compared to that of water represents a new relationship among the
water molecules. As ice they are in a crystalline relationship vastly different from their relationship to each
other as liquid. The phase change brings new emergent properties like solidity along with it.

There is a growing consensus among scientists that high energy particle physics and its rational, reductionism,
will not reveal what we really want to know about the universe. It given us much knowledge but will not tell us

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how complexity and order emerged from the featurelessness and chaos of the big bang. A new approach to
scientific research is in the offing. Some of its concepts include self-organization, organizing principles,
spontaneous order, nonlinear systems and, something that as yet has no agreed name, the opposite of entropy.

Emergents are those organizations of matter or processes that result from the synergetic combination of simple
systems into more complex ones. Characterized by the phrase, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Emergent properties are those novel ways of acting that come into being with the increase in organizational
complexity of systems. They are constructions of a whole system and do not belong to the component parts of
the system. Emergent properties are collectives that can disappear when the communicating relationship within
the system is disrupted.

The cell is an emergent from the background of inanimate matter and brings into being the new property called
life. Progress in the world is by means of emergents and their properties.

Readings on: Reductionism to holism — a paradigm shift

Anderson, P.W., “More Is Different” in Science, 4 Aug. 1972 Vol. 177 No. 4047 [abridged– 375 words]—
quantitative differences become qualitative ones

The reductionist hypothesis may still be a topic for controversy among philosophers, but among the great
majority of active scientists I think it is accepted without question. The workings of our minds and bodies, and
of all the animate or inanimate matter of which we have any detailed knowledge, are assumed to be controlled
by the same set of fundamental laws, which except under certain extreme conditions we feel we know pretty
well.

It seems inevitable to go on uncritically to what appears at first sight to be an obvious corollary of

reductionism: that if everything obeys the same fundamental laws, then the only scientists who are studying
anything really fundamental are those who are working on those laws. In practice, that amounts to some
astrophysicists, some elementary particle physicists, some logicians and other mathematicians, and few
others…

The main fallacy [of] the reductionist hypothesis [is that it] does not by any means imply a “constructionist”
one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those
laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of
the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science,
much less to those of society.

The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity.
The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in
terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely
new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as
fundamental in its nature as any other…[and will show] how the whole becomes not only more than the sum of
but very different from the sum of the parts…

With increasing complication… we expect to encounter fascinating and very fundamental questions in fitting
together less complicated pieces into a more complicated system and understanding the basically new types of
behavior that can result… Quantitative differences become qualitative ones.

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Johnson, George “Challenging Particle Physics as Path to Truth” New York Times, 12/4/2001 [1800
words] — a new goal for physics research

In science's great chain of being, the particle physicists place themselves with the angels, looking down from
the heavenly spheres on the chemists, biologists, geologists, meteorologists - those who are applying, not
discovering nature's most fundamental laws. Everything, after all, is made from subatomic particles. Once you
have a concise theory explaining how they work, the rest should just be filigree.

Even the kindred discipline of solid-state physics, which is concerned with the mass behavior of particles –
what metals, crystals, semiconductors, whole lumps of matter do - is often considered a lesser pursuit. "Squalid
state physics," Murray Gell-Mann, discoverer of the quark, dubbed it. Others dismiss it as "dirt physics."

Recently there have been rumblings from the muck. In a clash of scientific cultures, some prominent squalid-
staters have been challenging the particle purists as arbiters of ultimate truth.

"The stakes here are very high," said Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, a Stanford University theorist who shared a Nobel
Prize in 1998 for discoveries in solid-state physics. "At issue is a deep epistemological matter having to do with
what physics is."

Last year Dr. Laughlin and Dr. David Pines, a theorist at the University of Illinois and Los Alamos National
Laboratory, published a manifesto declaring that the "science of the past," which seeks to distill the richness of
reality into a few simple equations governing subatomic particles, was coming to an impasse.

Many complex systems - the very ones the solid-staters study - appear to be irreducible. Made of many
interlocking parts, they display a kind of synergy, obeying "higher organizing principles" that cannot be further
simplified no matter how hard you try.
Carrying the idea even further, some solid-state physicists are trying to show that the laws of relativity, long
considered part of the very bedrock of the physical world, are not platonic truths that have existed since time
began.

They may have emerged from the roiling of the vacuum of space, much as supply-and-demand and other "laws"
of economics emerge from the bustle of the marketplace. If so, then solid-state physics, which specializes in
how emergent phenomena occur, may be the most fundamental science of them all.

"We're in the midst of a paradigm change," Dr. Pines said. "Ours is not the prevailing view, but I think it will
turn out to be the one that lasts."

Working in this vein, one of Dr. Laughlin's Stanford colleagues, Dr. Shoucheng Zhang, recently was co-author
of a paper suggesting that elementary particles like photons and gravitons, the carriers of electromagnetism and
gravity, might not be so elementary after all - they might emerge as ripples in the vacuum of space, bubbling up
from the quagmire in a way that can best be explained in terms of solid-state physics.

"The idea is of course crazy, thought provoking, and somewhat anti-establishment," Dr. Zhang said. "The main
idea is to apply concepts from solid-state physics to answer some big questions of the universe."

The particle physicists insist that there is plenty of mileage left in their own approach. "I strongly believe that
the fundamental laws of nature are not emergent phenomena," said Dr. David Gross, director of the Institute for
Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "Bob Laughlin and I have violent
arguments about this."

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After hearing Dr. Zhang describe his theory at a seminar last month, Dr. Gross deemed it "an interesting piece
of work." He said he found the mathematics "beautiful and intriguing, and perhaps of use somewhere."

That may sound like faint praise, but the particle physicists have reason to be wary. The squalid-staters are
challenging them in a debate over how the universe is made and how science should be done.

Following the method of Plato, the particle physicists are inclined to see nature as crystallized mathematics. In
the beginning was a single superforce, the embodiment of an elegant set of equations they call, only a bit
facetiously, the theory of everything. Then along came the Big Bang to ruin it all.

The universe cooled and expanded, the single force splintering into the four very different forces observed
today: electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces, which work inside atoms, are described by
quantum mechanics and special relativity. The fourth force, gravity, is described by an entirely different theory,
general relativity.

The particle physicists' ultimate goal is "grand unification" - recovering the primordial symmetry in the form of
a single law - a few concise equations, it is often said, that could be silk-screened onto a T- shirt.

This approach, in which the most complex phenomena are boiled down to a unique underlying theory, is called
reductionism.

The problem, the solid-staters say, is that many forms of matter - ranging from the exotic like superconductors
and superfluids to the mundane like crystals and metals - cannot be described in terms of fundamental particle
interactions. When systems become very complex, completely new and independent laws emerge. "More is
different," as the Nobel laureate Philip W. Anderson put it in a landmark paper in 1972. To the solid-staters, it
would take something the size of a circus tent to hold all the equations capturing the unruliness of the physical
world.

Like Aristotle, they lean toward the notion that it is the equations that flow from nature instead of the other way
around. Mathematics is just a tool for making sense of it all.
"For at least some fundamental things in nature, the theory of everything is irrelevant," declared Dr. Laughlin
and Dr. Pines in the Jan. 4, 2000 issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The central
task of theoretical physics in our time is no longer to write down the ultimate equations but rather to catalog and
understand emergent behavior in its many guises, including potentially life itself."

There may not be a theory of everything, they say, just a lot of theories of things. This is exactly the kind of
squalor the particle physicists abhor.

Dr. Grigori E. Volovik, a solid- state physicist at the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland, champions
an idea he calls "anti- grand unification." In a review article last year (xxx.lanl.gov/abs /gr-qc/0104046), he
ventured that the universe may have begun not in a state of pristine symmetry but in one of lawlessness. The
laws of relativity and perhaps quantum mechanics itself would have emerged only later on.

The notion of emergent laws is not radical in itself. A flask of gas consists of trillions of molecules randomly
colliding with one another. From this disorder, qualities like temperature and pressure emerge, along with laws
relating one to the other.

To take that idea a level deeper. Physicists now believe that the vacuum of space is, paradoxically, not vacuous
at all. It seethes with energy, in the form of "virtual particles" constantly flitting in and out of existence. So
perhaps, Dr. Volovik suggests, even laws now considered fundamental emerged from this constant subatomic
buzz.

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Solid-state physics offers clues to how something like this might occur. The atomic vibrations that ripple
through matter are, like all quantum phenomena, carried by particles - called, in this case, phonons.

Just as photons carry light and gravitons carry gravity, phonons carry the subatomic equivalent of sound. Like
bubbles in a carbonated beverage, phonons - physicists call them "quasi particles" - appear only when the
medium is disturbed. In the world of solid-state physics, quasi particles abound. In some substances, like the
semiconductors used to make computer chips, the displacement of an electron leaves behind a "hole" that
behaves like a positively charged particle. An electron and a hole can sometimes stick together to form a
chargeless quasi particle called an exciton. Other such ephemera include magnons and polarons.

Evanescent though they are, quasi particles act every bit like elementary particles, obeying the laws of quantum
mechanics. This has led some mavericks to wonder whether there is really any difference at all. Maybe
elementary particles are just quasi particles - an effervescence in the vacuum.

Particularly intriguing is a phenomenon, occurring at extremely low temperatures, called the fractional quantum
Hall effect. In certain substances, quasi particles appear that act curiously like electrons but with one-third the
normal charge. (Dr. Laughlin won his Nobel Prize for a theory explaining this.)

Quarks, the basic building blocks of matter, also carry a one-third charge, a coincidence that has fueled
speculation that emergence may be somehow fundamental to the very existence of the physical world.

A stumbling block to carrying this idea further has been that the quantum Hall effect seems to work only in
two-dimensions - on the surface of a substance. But in a paper published in the Oct. 26 issue of Science, Dr.
Zhang and his student Jiangping Hu showed how to extend the phenomenon. In their scheme, the physical
world would be a three-dimensional "surface" of a four-dimensional "quantum liquid" - an underlying sea of
particles that can be thought of as the vacuum.

Analyzing the ripples that would appear in such a medium, the two scientists were surprised to find that they
mathematically resembled electromagnetic and gravitational waves. But there are problems with the model. At
this point, the hypothetical photons and gravitons that emerge from the equations do not interact with other
particles, as they do in the real world.

"The coupling is zero, so apples are weightless, as is everything else," said Dr. Joseph Polchinski, a string
theorist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who recently discussed the model with Dr. Zhang.

And there is what the theory's inventors concede is an "embarrassment of riches" - the equations predict hordes
of exotic particles that do not exist.

"The hope is that some modification of the theory, not yet specified in detail, will remove the extra fields and
turn on the coupling," Dr. Polchinski said. "Whether this can be done is at this point a guess. Overall my
attitude now is interest with a high degree of skepticism."

If the theory can be made to work, it may point to a new way of unifying quantum mechanics and relativity. But
Dr. Zhang is careful not to oversell what he considers a work in progress.

"Our work only made a tiny step toward this direction," Dr. Zhang said, "but it seems to indicate that the goal
may not be impossible to reach." At the very least, he said, his work may inspire more collaboration between
particle physicists and solid-staters.

Ultimately, though, the two sides know that they are talking across a divide. Taken to its extreme, emergence
suggests that all the fundamental laws, even quantum mechanics, may be secondary - that at the base of reality
is random noise.

5
Dr. Polchinski said he found that idea discouraging. "To me, the history of science seems to be a steady
progression toward simpler and more unified laws, and I expect to see this continue and to contribute to it.
Things may take many surprising twists and turns," he said, "but we reductionists are still quite happily and
busily reducing."

Johnson, George “Challenging Particle Physics as Path to Truth” New York Times, 12/4/2001 [abstract—
130 words] — a new goal for physics research

An argument is brewing between the physicists who study elementary particles and those who study solid state
matter, complex systems made of many interlocking parts. The ultimate goal of elementary particle research is
a few simple equations that will describe how subatomic particles interact to produce all that is. Looking for
explanation of the whole by understanding its basic parts is reductionism.

Solid state physicists believe that this approach is insufficient and will not give the answers sought. Many forms
of matter cannot be described in terms of fundamental particle interactions. When systems become very
complex they appear to be irreducible and completely new and independent laws emerge. Complex systems
display novel emergent behavior, obeying higher organizing principles that cannot be further simplified.

Readings on: Self-organization

 Golden, Richard Self-Organizing Systems: a resource for teachers 1997 [abridged— 1500 words] —
characteristics of self-organizing systems

Systems in general
A system is a group of parts so linked together by interactions that the group functions as a whole. The function
or behavior of the system is different from the function or behavior of the individual parts.

As the scientific understanding of nature has increased and deepened, it has become evident that the world is
more interconnected than we could have imagined…

An illustration of interconnections among systems comes from the science of ecology. By stressing the
relationships among organisms and the reciprocal influence between those organisms and their environment,
ecology has reinforced the idea that nature consists of systems within systems.

The fact that the word system is so frequently used indicates both the usefulness of the concept and the ubiquity
of systems. Increasingly the world is viewed from a systems point of view. Besides biological and astronomical
systems we recognize geological, economic, mechanical, legal, political, educational and logical systems, to
name only a few.

Traditional science has been remarkably successful in finding out how things work by taking them apart and
studying the pieces. The process is less successful when the entity examined is complex and the parts
interdependent. Focusing on the parts tends to make the interactions disappear from our attention…

Systems can produce novelty. The properties of the whole system are more than the simple addition of the
properties of the parts. Put electrical resistors, condensers, wires, transistors and a power source together in a
certain relationship and a new property emerges - the ability to detect radio waves. This ability is not in any of
the parts. It originates in the special relationship among the parts. Such new properties are usually impossible to
predict when new systems form…

There is a general tendency for systems to combine to form more complex systems. Hierarchical organizations
of nested systems are common in nature. As systems interact they influence and modify each other. New

6
behaviors and new properties arise out of the interactions. The human body with its various subsystems is an
example.

Some thinkers consider the tendency for systems to combine to be so important as to raise it to the level of a
law of nature. The combined systems are often said to be higher level systems. The designation of higher and
lower is not meant to be one of value. The distinction is made to identify those that are more complex from
those that are simpler.

Self-organizing systems
These are systems which spontaneously form from the association of compatible parts. The forms and functions
of the systems are new and arise from the relationships among parts…

Self-organizing systems exist on many levels, from self-organized atoms to gigantic galactic systems to the
universe itself. They can be divided into groups according to their energy use. Some, like atoms, crystals and
the planetary system, require no input of energy from the outside to maintain themselves. These systems are
close to equilibrium.
Other self-organizing systems maintain themselves only through a continuous exchange of energy and matter
with their environment. Because they are not only absorbing matter and energy but are also shedding them,
these systems have been called dissipative systems. Living organisms are a prime example of such systems.

Characteristics of self-organizing systems

1. Multiple components
Self-organizing systems are networks of many parts acting coherently. Each part operates according to its own
nature but within an environment that is produced by its interactions with other parts in the system.

2. Self-initiated interaction
It is important to emphasize that there is no agent or center inside the system forming it… In the self-organized
system of a free economic market there is no central command center. The prices of the goods are an outcome
of the interaction of the participants.

3. Self-configuration
As a self-organizing system constructs itself, the arrangement of its constituent parts is determined by the
internal relationships of those parts. The cubic shape of salt crystals, for example, is determined by the lattice
formed by the alternating sodium and chloride ions.

4. Mutuality of influence - Interdependence

Just as system behavior is produced through the synergistic action of the constituent parts, the behaviors of the
parts are influenced by their association within the system.
A consideration of flocking, schooling and herding behavior will make this clearer. The spacing and speed of
movement of each animal produces the group behavior. However, the behavior of the group, speeding up or
turning to avoid predation for example, will change the individual’s behavior.

It is this kind of mutuality of action which makes self-organized systems so difficult to study in the traditional
reductionist way. Everything is in flux. The system is influenced by the parts and the parts may be changing
because of the interactions within the system. There are many feedback arrangements.

5. Communication (information exchange)

Since the action of a self-organizing system is a product of the internal interactions of the parts, there must be
some way for the parts to influence each other for the system to function. Should this information-exchange
fail, the system would cease to operate. How could blind birds form a flock? Or a market function with no
knowledge of prices? Feedback is also involved here.

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6. Self-maintenance - Adaptation to change
Within limits, a self-organizing system has the ability to preserve its form and to reorganize itself in the face of
disruption. The flickering of the candle flame and the sweeping turns of a school of fish are examples. The
system is constantly reforming itself as it responds to changes in its environment. Again, there are many
feedback arrangements that are involved.

A special note on feedback and self-organizing systems

In all self-organizing and self-maintaining systems feedback is, of necessity, an essential element. The notion is
imbedded in the concept of interconnectedness of system parts and mutuality of influence. However,
explanations using feedback mechanisms become extraordinarily complex when dealing with self-organizing
systems.

In a simple feedback system the change in output can be fed back to influence production and link the parts.
But when more interconnected parts are added to a system it very quickly becomes impossible to disentangle
the feedback circuits. In some cases the feedback may have diverse effects on different parts. For complex
systems the concept of simple feedback is usually inadequate.

7. Collective new properties produced

An aggregation of things that coalesce into a self-organizing system becomes something more than a collection.
As the parts establish mutual relationships, the system as a whole acquires new collective properties. When
enough neurons come together and interconnections are established among them, the property called
consciousness comes into being. The collective property is not within any of the parts. It is a product of the
interconnections.

8. Divergent property of dissipative systems

The concept of dissipative systems originated in the work of llya Prigogine for which he won the Nobel Prize in
1977. Dissipative systems operate far from equilibrium. They take in and disperse considerable quantities of
matter and energy and exhibit instabilities that make their courses impossible to predict. Although the actions of
such systems are bounded by the limits of physical laws they have many ways of proceeding within those
limits. Examples are the touch down points and paths of tornados and the branching points of plants.

Living organisms are obviously dissipative systems. From the same starting point in a constricting maze the
second path of a subject animal is never the same as the first it traveled. Even genetically identical twins have
different eye iris patterns and, in time as they interact with their environment, develop other differences. For
dissipative systems there are divergent pathways. Many directions, all equally possible, are open to them and,
as they move into a particular set of sequences, they create new possibilities that might not be available had
they moved differently.

Biological evolution is one result of this divergent property. The path of species development must obey
physical laws and environmental constraints but can never be predetermined. Another example of the feedback
process is the fact that as species interact with the environment they also change the environment that helped to
determine their development.

Summary
Using the above characteristics, self-organizing systems can be described as those systems that have multiple
components that initiate their own interactions and configurations. Within such systems there is an
interdependence of parts and communication of some sort among them. They are able to maintain themselves
and adapt to changing environments. Sometimes new properties are produced when they self-assemble and
those systems far from equilibrium may change in unexpected ways.

Conclusion
The ability of systems to self-organize and spontaneously develop new unpredictable behaviors or structures

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brings novelty into the universe. Within the deterministic laws of physics, self-organizing systems bring the
unexpected, making the future unknown and unknowable. Through these systems nature is creative.

The second law of thermodynamics describes a universe running down to changeless equilibrium. The
development of self-organizing systems shows a universe increasing its levels of complexity and organization,
albeit locally, at the expense of universal entropy increase.

Golden, Richard Self-Organizing A system is a group of parts so linked together by interactions that the
Systems: a resource for teachers 1997 group functions as a whole. All of nature consists of systems within
[abstract— 120 words] — systems. The properties of the whole system are more than the simple
characteristics of self-organizing addition of the properties of the parts and there is a general tendency for
systems systems to combine to form more complex systems with more complex
behavior.

Self-organizing systems are systems that spontaneously form from the

association of compatible parts. The forms and functions of the systems
are new and arise from the relationships among parts.

The ability of systems to self-organize and spontaneously develop new

unpredictable behaviors or structures brings novelty into the universe.

Davies, Paul The Cosmic Blueprint Simon & Schuster, New York 1989 [abridged— 1500 words] — self-
organized structures

Anyone who has stood by a fast flowing stream cannot fail to have been struck by the endlessly shifting pattern
of eddies and swirls. The turmoil of the torrent is revealed, on closer inspection, to be a maelstrom of organized
activity as new fluid structures appear, metamorphose and propagate, perhaps to fade back into the flow further
downstream. It is as though the river can somehow call into fleeting existence a seemingly limitless variety of
forms.

What is the source of the river’s creative ability?

The conventional view of physical phenomena is that they can ultimately all be reduced to a few fundamental
interactions described by deterministic laws. This implies that every physical system follows a unique course of
evolution. It is usually assumed that small changes in the initial conditions produce small changes in the
subsequent behavior.

However, now a completely new view of nature is emerging which recognizes that many phenomena fall
outside the conventional framework. Determinism does not necessarily imply predictability: some very simple
systems are infinitely sensitive to their initial conditions. Their evolution in time is so erratic and complex that
it is essentially unknowable…

Many physical systems behave in the conventional manner under a range of conditions, but may arrive at a
threshold at which predictability suddenly breaks down. There is no longer any unique course, and the system
may ‘choose’ from a range of alternatives. This usually signals an abrupt transition to a new state that may have
very different properties. In many cases the system makes a sudden leap to a much more elaborate and complex
state. Especially interesting are those cases where spatial patterns or temporal rhythms spontaneously appear.
Such states seem to possess a degree of global cooperation. Systems which undergo transitions to these states
are referred to as self-organizing.

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Examples of self-organization have been found in astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology. The familiar
phenomenon of turbulent flow mentioned already has puzzled scientists and philosophers for millennia. The
onset of turbulence depends on the speed of the fluid. At low speed the flow is smooth and featureless, but as
the speed is increased a critical threshold occurs at which the fluid breaks up into more complex forms. Further
increase in speed can produce additional transitions.

The transition to turbulent flow occurs in distinct stages when a fluid flows past an obstacle such as a cylinder.
At low speed the fluid streams smoothly around the cylinder, but as the speed is increased a pair of vortices
appears downstream of the obstacle. At higher speeds the vortices become unstable and break away to join the
flow. Finally, at yet higher speed the fluid becomes highly irregular… The fluid has available to it unlimited
variety and complexity, and its future behaviour is unknowable. Evidently we have found the source of the
river’s creativity…

The simplest type of self-organization in physics is a phase transition. The most familiar phase transitions are
the changes from a liquid to a solid or a gas. When water vapour condenses to form droplets, or liquid water
freezes to ice, an initially featureless state abruptly and spontaneously acquires structure and complexity.

Phase transitions can take many other forms too. For example, a ferromagnet at high temperature shows no
permanent magnetization, but as the temperature is lowered a critical threshold is reached at which
magnetization spontaneously appears. The ferromagnet consists of lots of microscopic magnets that are
partially free to swivel. When the material is hot these magnets are jiggled about chaotically and independently,
so that on a macroscopic scale their magnetizations average each other out. As the material is cooled, the
mutual interactions between the micromagnets try to align them. At the critical temperature the disruptive effect
of the thermal agitation is suddenly overcome, and all the micromagnets cooperate by lining up into an ordered
array. Their magnetizations now reinforce to produce a coherent large scale field…

The foregoing examples of self-organization occur when the temperature is gradually lowered under conditions
of thermodynamic equilibrium. More dramatic possibilities arise when a system is driven far away from
equilibrium. One such case is the laser. Near to thermodynamic equilibrium a hot solid or gas behaves like an
ordinary lamp, with each atom emitting light randomly and independently. The resulting beam is an incoherent
jumble of wave trains each a few metres long. It is possible to drive the system away from equilibrium by
‘pumping’, which is a means of giving energy to the atoms to put an excessive number of them into excited
states. When this is done a critical threshold is reached at which the atoms suddenly organize themselves on a
global scale and execute cooperative behaviour to a very high level of precision. Billions of atoms emit
wavelets that are exactly in phase, producing a coherent wave train of light that stretches for thousands of
miles…

Dissipative structures
Self-organization occurs both in equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems. In both cases the new phase has a
more complex spatial form. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the type of structure present
in an ice cube and in swirls of water in a stream. The former is a static configuration of matter, frozen in a
particular pattern. The latter is a dynamical entity, generated by a continual throughput of matter and energy
from its environment.

It is now recognized that, quite generally, systems driven far from equilibrium tend to undergo abrupt
spontaneous changes of behaviour. They may start to behave erratically, or to organize themselves into new and
unexpected forms. Although the onset of these abrupt changes can sometimes be understood on theoretical
grounds, the detailed form of the new phase is essentially unpredictable. [For example] observing convection
cells, the physicist can explain, using traditional concepts, why the original homogeneous fluid became
unstable. But he could not have predicted the detailed arrangement of the convection cells in advance. The
experimenter has no control over, for example, whether a given blob of fluid will end up in a clockwise or
anticlockwise rotating cell.

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A crucial property of far-from-equilibrium systems that give rise to process structures is that they are open to
their environment. Traditional techniques of physics and chemistry are aimed at closed systems near to
equilibrium, so an entirely new approach is needed. One of the leading figures in developing this new approach
is the chemist Ilya Prigogine. He prefers the term dissipative structure to describe forms such as convection
cells.

To understand why, think about the motion of a pendulum. In the idealized case of an isolated frictionless
pendulum (closed system), the bob will swing forever, endlessly repeating the same pattern of motion… The
situation is very different if friction is introduced. The moving pendulum now dissipates energy in the form of
heat. Whatever its initial motion, it will inexorably come to rest…

The pendulum is a simple example of a dissipative structure, but the same principles apply quite generally…
Because energy is continually dissipated, a dissipative structure will only survive so long as it is supplied with
energy (and perhaps matter too) by the environment.

This is the key to the remarkable self-organizing abilities of far-from-equilibrium systems. Organized activity
in a closed system inevitably decays in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. But a dissipative
structure [like the living cell or a city] evades the degenerative effects of the second law by exporting entropy
into its environment. In this way, although the total entropy of the universe continually rises, the dissipative
structure maintains its coherence and order, and may even increase it [for a period of time].

The study of dissipative structures thus provides a vital clue to understanding the generative capabilities of
nature. It has long seemed paradoxical that a universe apparently dying under the influence of the second law
nevertheless continually increases its level of complexity and organization. We now see how it is possible for
the universe to increase both organization and entropy at the same time. The optimistic and pessimistic arrows
of time can coexist: the universe can display creative unidirectional progress even in the face of the second
law…

It is hard to overemphasize the importance of the distinction between matter and energy in, or close to,
equilibrium — the traditional subject for scientific study — and far-from-equilibrium dissipative systems.
Prigogine has referred to the latter as active matter, because of its potential to spontaneously and unpredictably
develop new structures… Disequilibrium, claims Prigogine, ‘is the source of order’ in the universe; it brings
‘order out of chaos’.

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