Talk:Self-organization

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Contents 1 Self-organization in human society 2 Evolution and entropy 3 WHEN did the 'self-organization' concept originate? 4 Definition of entrophy

[edit] Self-organization in human society

You might care to mention that Marx and marxists often speak of the "self-organizion" of the working class.

[edit] Evolution and entropy

It seems that the "Evolution#Self-organization and entropy" section is no longer there. It is obvious that the energy input from the sun allows life to exist on Earth while the vast majority of the remainder of the universe tends towards increased disorder/entropy via the 2nd law of TD. I think that it is incumbent upon this article to explain its relationship to Biological evolution clearly. -- 199.33.32.40 04:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I mentioned evolution, but I avoided attempting to yet explain the relationship. -- 199.33.32.40 04:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WHEN did the 'self-organization' concept originate?

The article claims, without attribution, in the lead-in paragraph that self-organization concept originated in the field of Physics. I suspect that the concept likely originated in several fields relatively independently, and in Physics it may very well have arisen de novo by physicists unfamiliar with the concept in any other field. But that is not my primary concern here.

In the social sciences (my field), I am aware of significant early development of SO in ancient Chinese political theory. The Taoists were articulating ideas on self-organization in the 6th-2nd centuries BC (1979, Hsiao, Kung-chuan, A History of Chinese Political Thought -- Volume One: From the Beginnings to the Sixth Century A.D., Princeton Library of Asian Translations). Chinese development stopped, to my knowledge, after the 2nd C. B.C. Outside of political science, where there was admittedly little theoretical development until the 20th C., there is a long history of self-organization theorizing in economics at least since Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson in the later 18th C. and much more explicitly in book 3 of Carl Menger's 1883, Untersuchungen uber die Methode der Socialwissenschaftern und der Politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, which was first published in English in 1963 under the title: "Problems of economics and sociology," and again in 1985 under the (better translated) title of "Investigations into the method of the social sciences with special reference to economics."

So I make no claim as to which discipline had it first. Cross-discipline historiography is especially difficult. But I recommend we hash it out a bit on the discussion page and see if we can't agree on some improvements to the article. Perhaps a new section on the origin of the concept in various disciplines? Whadayathink? N2e 22:31, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

If noticed that the article gives multiple origins.

1. The most robust and unambiguous examples of self-organizing systems are from physics, where the concept was first noted.
2. One of the earliest statements of this idea was by the philosopher Descartes,
3. The term "self-organizing" ... introduced in 1947 by the psychiatrist and engineer W. Ross Ashby.

Personally I think it is to answer the question When did the 'self-organization' concept originate?. It's not quite clear what the concept exactly is, so you can link it to all kinds of things: robust and unambiguous (and unexplained) examples in physics...??; ideas on self-organization articulated by the Taoists...? I think terms as first and earliest shouldn't be used here. I think only the third statement makes sense. - Mdd 23:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I just make the note here that article cleanup vis-a-vis when the concept originated has not yet been done in the article. Mdd obviously agrees that such clean up is necessary, and I agree with Mdd that the third statement of his makes the most sense as an approach to deal with the subject. I don't have time to clean up the entire article. (although I would be happy to help on the self-organization in the social sciences sometime.) Any other editors who care about the overall construct of the SO article want to give it a try? N2e 20:58, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definition of entrophy

And you might care to verify that science does not define such a thing a entrophy, only a change entrophy. Nothing has entrophy but when potential energy is reduced an increase in entrophy occurs. 199.80.65.51 17:49, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean "entropy"? In that case, you are incorrect. See this. Now that is in the context of statistical mechanics, which you may think of as a more accurate microscopic version of classical thermodynamics. It may be correct that in classical thermo only differences in entropy are well-defined, but I am not sure. Joshua Davis (talk) 19:52, 9 December 2007 (UTC)