Self-organization is a process where some form of order arises out of a random system.
The process is spontaneous: it happens on its own. It is not directed or controlled by any agent inside or outside the system.
Self-organization occurs in a variety of physical, chemical, biological, social and cognitive systems. A common example is crystallization. An example from biological chemistry is the lipid bilayer, which is the basis of the cell membrane, and so is of great importance.
Many self-organising things have properties which are "emergent". What this means is that one can't predict what will happen, usually because the possibilities are too many to study. Some examples:
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article Self-organization, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki Simple English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.