>But clearly PURE self-organization is impossible: everything is
>other-organized to SOME extent. That is, if there is NO other-organization,
>then there is no degree of interaction with an environment, and therefore
>there is thermodynamic isolation, and thus necessarily degradation to
>equilibrium. Taking the hurricane as the exemplar of a self-organizing
>system, it must interact with its environment to become organized. This is
>only PARTIALLY self-organized.
The term self-organization has two nubs, I think. On one hand it is an attempt
to
describe holistic order in terms of "structural determinism" as Maturana would
say, or in terms of "local interactions in the complex system" as Kauffman would
put it. Both stress that the global observable order come from within the system
itself. However, all self-organized systems are open in the sense that they are
embedded in their environment and there is a flow of matter and energy through
them. But this is not innate to the order itself but is just a necessary
condition for self-organization.
On the other hand the term self-organization is an attempt to obscure the
ultimate non-causality of self-ordering systems. "Emergence" is much better in
this respect. It acknowledges that the order we see in self-organizing systems
ultimate arises spontaniously out of nowhere. The term "self-organization" tries
to cover this up by designating the order to the system itself. But the fact is
that emergent order exists independently of the particular system they arise in.
Wings and eyes have independently evolved several times in the course of
evolution. Waves spontaniously re-emerge in many different systems etc. etc.
This shows that the order is intrinsic to the order itself, not to the systems
in which it is embodied.
Onar.