Technological systems become organized by commands from outside, as when human intentions lead to the building of structures or machines. But many nat ural syst

The synchronized flashing of fireflies at night. The spiraling patterns of an aggregating slime mold. The anastomosing network of army-ant trails. The coordinat

The Self-Organizing Economy In the last few years the concept of self-organizing systems—complex systems in which randomness and chaos seem spontaneously to e

Complex systems are usually difficult to design and control. There are several particular methods for coping with complexity, but there is no general approach t

The paradigm of self-organisation is fundamental to theories of collective action in economic science and democratic governance in political science. Self-organ