Surfing the Edge of Chaos by Mark Millemann

Self-organization and emergence are two sides of the same coin of life. Self-organization is the tendency of certain (but not all) systems operating far from equilibrium to shift to a new state when their constituent elements generate unlikely combinations. When systems become sufficiently populated and properly interconnected, the interactions assemble themselves into a new order: proteins into cells, cells into organs, organs into organisms, organisms into societies. Simple parts networked together can undergo a metamorphosis. "A single ant can't fight off a wasp. A single brain cell is a simpleton-but a few tens of millions (or billions) of them can perform miracles," observes science writer Neil Gross.1

Emergence* is the outcome of all this: a new state or condition. As we have seen, a colony of fire ants has emergent capabilities and constitutes an organism weighing 20 kilograms, with 20 million mouths and stings. A jazz ensemble creates an emergent sound that no one could imagine from listening to the individual instruments. Kevin Kelly reminds us: "Ants have shown us that there is almost nothing so small in the world that it can't be made larger by embedding a bit of interaction in many copies of it, and then connecting them all together. "2 Two hundred years earlier, Adam Smith had the same thought in mind. As one of the pioneers of a new discipline of economics, he called our attention to the "invisible hand" and its aggregate effects as a mercantile force. But Smith recognized that individual choice did not explain everything. In addition, individuals, as members of communities, generate fiduciary relationships and dependencies.