Organized complexity
Organized complexity is, simply put, things that look designed. (They don't have to be designed.) This is a subjective term without any clear definitions.or measures (since things look different to different people, and people have different ideas of extents of definitions) and therefore scientifically useless. Do things necessarily have to appear organized to look designed?
The divine comedy Creationism |
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How can things just up and organize themselves?
At the molecular/cellular level, interactions are governed by Brownian motion
It is also the case, as Steven Johnson notes in his book, Emergence,[1] that many apparently random, chaotic and infinitely complex collectives do organize themselves into meaningful patterns — "organized complexity". Phenomena cited are ant colonies, cities, and "learning" software that creates at least a mime of intelligence.
The basic force at work is that of guiding principles, laws, instructions — that are repeated — and these repeated instructions, such as one might find in DNA, for instance, manifest themselves in patterns, and then patterns into form. So from ideas, laws, or principles and form of life materializes. And this comes not from an authorized signal-giver, but rather "from below", integral to the "swarm" itself.
See also
References
- Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson. ISBN 0684868768.
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