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Talk:Self-organization

Self-organization in human society
You might care to mention that Marx and marxists often speak of the "self-organizion" of the working class.
 * True self organization requires that the units be free to "organize themselves". In human societies---made up of individuals---the units are not free currently to self organize.
 * This lack of freedom is an economic phenomenon: we are told that we have to earn the right "to be here" or be supported by some one (parents, sponsors, etc.,) who is "economically viable". Hence the basic social units are subject to the un-freedom imposed by "economic conscription".
 * This was inevitable throughout human history (civilizations had to be based on the enslavement---in some form of other---of the majority of individual units) until the onset of the Industrial Revolution. After this evolutionary milestone, while the "industrial and cultural arts" advanced in leaps and bounds, social institutions failed to adapt to the changes advancing science and technology introduced into the the wealth creating capacity of economies: Instead of gradually releasing individuals from the need to earn their right to the means of life by selling their labour, society is still pressing individuals into the a-human role of factors of production by the anachronistic concept work ethic.
 * This must change, else three thousand years worth of painful civilization-building will be wasted. Ref: The Economy of Abundance, Manhood of Humanity, etc.,
 * "...the point is to change it."
 * Janosabel (talk) 12:54, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

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)

 * The 2nd law of thermodynamics does not say the entropy of the universe always increases, and that goes against cosmological observations and the standard model of the big bang where entropy is constant per co-moving volume basis (See Weinberg's "First 3 Minutes"). Also note that there is no net heat exchange on large scales. See Feynman's lecture on thermodynamics where he gives the precise wording of the 2nd law and states that the "always increasing" wording "is not a very good statement of the second law". Entropy always increases only in isolated systems, but there is no such thing. That's just an engineering approximation. All containers at a temperature will have to emit black body radiation. In my view gravitational systems emit entropy as their mass decreases "so that the universe can expand".

 * I believe the cyclical force of the moon on the tides and mantle are key to life on Earth. Isaac Asimov mentions life as we know it would have been impossible without the moon. I believe our best candidates for other life in the solar system is on two moons undergoing similar cyclical forces from external sources. I believe there is thermodynamic principle that shows a closed system like the Earth (not isolated because it emits net entropy, has heat energy in equal energy out, and it is receiving cyclical forces from the moon) can have decreasing entropy (self-organization) as a result of external cyclical forces. For example, loosely packing objects of different shapes (or even single shapes like spheres) has a looser packing arrangement than if you shake it up as you add the pieces, or just shake at the end. Being more compact as a result of the cyclical force is reduced entropy. I have not been able to show the entropy of the total mass on Earth is reducing (by following the specific entropy i.e. per kg or per mole of the reactants e.g. CO2 to O2 and Carbon bonds) but the mass of the "living" part of Earth is decreasing in entropy as we develop more useful structures (metals, cement, carbon fiber), energy capture (Silicon), energy movement (metals), energy usage (motors, i.e. metals), and thinking about how to do it (computers using Silicon). Biology is creating these new forms of "life". The machines are more rigid which allows for better defense, better attack, and better command and control, down to electrons instead of the molecules and ions brains and photosynthesis use. An overarching principle is the removal of oxygen from metal ores and metalloid ores. Even carbon fiber needs the oxygen removed.  Rigid materials have lower entropy per kg.  All of life from energy capture to defense/attack to movement of materials works better if the mass it uses has a lower specific entropy.  Copies of crystallized genes (DNA) is lower entropy of the materials being used verses the natural state of those atoms.

 * I'm stating all this not to begin discussion, but to suggest there must be some literature out there that shows life is a self-organizing phenomena (lower entropy at least for some parts of the mass on Earth) as a result of basic thermodynamics of a closed system under the influence of an external cyclical force, and that this article is missing a very important type of "self-organization".
 * Ywaz (talk) 16:25, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

NinjaQuick (talk) 18:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC) it's back. Unfortunately I disagree with this being an explanation of evolution, rather it is a legalese interpretation of a law that is simple and governs all. No exceptions due to it being Biology. This is a matter of egg/chicken or chicken/egg. You cannot have photosynthesis without a living cell, and you cannot have a living cell without photosynthesis. The sun can provide the energy for current life but, it will increase the entropy of a system that cannot use its energy. This increase makes the self-organization impossible.

This is to say: Life as we know it cannot exist on our planet with the Laws we have discovered.

As a law, it must be tested and true at every level. If you want to claim that it does not hold true in any situation where it must hold true mathematically then call it a theory. Or Rule.

The assumption that if I decrease entropy here then somewhere entropy is increased is invalid as the change must be made in the same system. If you form a salt you get an increase in entropy from the gas and a decrease in entropy from the salt, with the heat produced you have a net 0 to positive entropy change for the system. Equilibrium will dissipate any variance very quickly. It is not quantum mechanics...

WHEN did the 'self-organization' concept originate?
I note that [citation needed] is included on the two references to Descartes with the request for inline annotaion. I find that to be odd. Part V of the Discorse on Method has the following points which seem to be self evident to me, but far to long to put "in line" so i cannot determine how to make the article more clear. ..t

"""what would happen in a new world, if God were now to create somewhere in the imaginary spaces matter sufficient to compose one, and were to agitate variously and confusedly the different parts of this matter, so that there resulted a chaos as disordered as the poets ever feigned, and after that did nothing more than lend his ordinary concurrence to nature, and allow her to act in accordance with the laws which he had established. ... I showed how the greatest part of the matter of this chaos must, in accordance with these laws, dispose and arrange itself in such a way as to present the appearance of heavens; how in the meantime some of its parts must compose an earth and some planets and comets, and others a sun and fixed stars.""" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.202.202.25 (talk) 23:20, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

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.
 * The most robust and unambiguous examples of self-organizing systems are from physics, where the concept was first noted.
 * One of the earliest statements of this idea was by the philosopher Descartes,
 * 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)

The concept of "self-organization", named as such, originates from Kant's Critique of Judgement, page 347 (Google Books version page 202). I have changed the page to reflect this. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of wiki standards and formatting and references can clean it up properly - I'm a newbie. I found the reference to Kant in Evelyn Fox Keller 2005 "Ecosystems, Organisms and Machines", BioSciences vol. 55 no. 12. --Unesn6iduja (talk) 17:18, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

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)

Self-organization vs self-ordering
The roots of the words indicate a clear distinction: ordo means rank or regular arrangement whereas organizare means to contrive, arrange. Clearly these words do not even apply to the same conceptual level.

For example, in Crystallization the term organization is never used, instead it uses the in this context proper term ordering. This applies to al the physical and chemical examples given: They show self-ordering not self-organization.

The term ordering is used to describe a structural or logical arrangement. The term organization is used to describe functional relations within a system. Organization implies a structural and logical arrangement, but requires much more. Something can be orderly without being a system.

This means that the term ordering is not really equivalent to organization (or organizing). -- gmlk (talk) 23:03, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Self-ordering phenomena should not be confused with self-organization. Self-ordering events occur spontaneously according to natural “law” propensities and are purely physicodynamic. Crystallization and the spontaneously forming dissipative structures of Prigogine are examples of self-ordering. Self-ordering phenomena involve no decision nodes, no dynamically-inert configurable switches, no logic gates, no steering toward algorithmic success or “computational halting”. Hypercycles, genetic and evolutionary algorithms, neural nets, and cellular automata have not been shown to self-organize spontaneously into nontrivial functions. Laws and fractals are both compression algorithms containing minimal complexity and information. Organization typically contains large quantities of prescriptive information. Prescriptive information either instructs or directly produces nontrivial optimized algorithmic function at its destination. Prescription requires choice contingency rather than chance contingency or necessity. Organization requires prescription, and is abstract, conceptual, formal, and algorithmic. Organization utilizes a sign/symbol/token system to represent many configurable switch settings. Physical switch settings allow instantiation of nonphysical selections for function into physicality. Switch settings represent choices at successive decision nodes that integrate circuits and instantiate cooperative management into conceptual physical systems. Switch positions must be freely selectable to function as logic gates. Switches must be set according to rules, not laws. Inanimacy cannot “organize” itself. Inanimacy can only self-order. “Self-organization” is without empirical and prediction-fulfilling support. No falsifiable theory of self-organization exists. “Self-organization” provides no mechanism and offers no detailed verifiable explanatory power. Care should be taken not to use the term “self-organization” erroneously to refer to low-informational, natural-process, self-ordering events, especially when discussing genetic information. ( Self-organization vs. self-ordering events in life-origin models, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2006.07.003 ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gmlk (talk • contribs) 11:37, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

The distinction made here between "order" and "organization" assumes that nonlinear order is impossible. Were this true (it isn't), feedback effects even as simple as that between microphone and amplifier would be causally traceable; i.e., one could attribute a first cause to the effect.

Organization is order with feedback. That is, time-dependent systems require no "prescriptive information" to self-organize, any more than an orchestra requires a conductor to synchronize the beat. Several interesting examples of self-organized regularity of this type are discussed in Steven Strogatz's book Sync; Hyperion, 2003. Self organization is indeed an observed natural phenomenon.

Thomas h ray (talk) 23:08, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

There is a difference between something being posible (a computer is posible) and something occure by it self. No one is saying that organisation is imposible, just that organization does not follow from the physical properties of the parts and it does not occure by itself. An orchestra is made up out of many intelligent actors. Could you give a example of self-organization, not self-ordering, without intelligent actor(s) being involved? -- gmlk (talk) 14:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Sure. Examples abound in both organic and inorganic nature. If you consider the synchronizing behavior of fireflies, e.g., discussed in Strogatz's book referenced above to be "intelligent" behavior, then consider chemical clocks. The statement in your source "inanimacy cannot organize itself" is simply incorrect. Nature is very well shown to be self organized at all levels. In the abstract sense of modeling, such as Per Bak's avalanche model, one can witness self organized criticality as an empirical result, driving large scale change from "below"at a critical threshold of small scale behavior. In other words, the behavior of "inanimate" particles cannot be distinguished from "intelligent" behavior in the model theoretic sense in which we objectively describe phenomena. Such models are really all we need; as Murray Gell-Mann put it (in John Horgan's book, The End of Science) no "something else" (i.e., no superfluous philosophy or belief) is required to describe and explain natural phenomena from the simplest (e.g., quarks) to the most complex (jaguars, human beings). See Gell-Mann's book, The Quark and the Jaguar. (Thomas h ray (talk) 17:02, 16 October 2009 (UTC)) Insert non-formatted text here

Exploitation vs. exploration
Overview is ending by a clarifying list, but point 3 obviously refers to some technically defined terms "exploitation and exploration", meaning something that regards the system's balance to the outer world. I removed the links that pointed to the colloquial exploitation and exploration, since such links would be misleading. In this context I put exploitation (systems theory) and exploration (systems theory) on my wish list. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 09:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

references not properly cited
The form of notes 21 and 23-36 are not useful - I want to consult the articles cited, but how can I do this when all that's given is a surname name and year? The journal name, date, and volume number should be supplied, with external links if available. This would be very useful, thanks in advance. Sascrutcher (talk) 15:08, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Agreed. All the citation numbers you mentioned in the July 2009 version of the article appear to be just as incomplete today.  I have added full tags to see if someone familiar with the linguistics literature can help expand the citations so that others might be able to verify them.  In the meantime, someone might want to research through the article history and find what editor added most of the linguistics-self-organization section; perhaps that editor would be willing to come back to the article and help improve the citations. N2e (talk) 14:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Missing citation in the overview
Among other missing citations, there is one that I think is important in the overview section.

There is no reference to where this is taken from and for what I've read there's no consensus on the main "ingredients" for a self-organizing system.

TheSen (talk) 12:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)TheSen

 * You are absolutely correct TheSen. This article needs a lot of work.  I am aware of no reliable sources that make an effort to compare the progress of self-organization in scientific thought between the various disciplines (e.g., physics, economics, chemistry, etc.).  Thus, it is quite difficult to say exactly what "self-organization" is in a one-size-fits-all general way.  We can however find definitions for self-organization in the context of several of the various disciplines mentioned in the article.  I'm not quite sure how to handle a generic definition at the top of the article, but am happy to work with others to improve it.  My own familiarity is with SO within the context of economics and the social sciences.  My guess is that most of the editors who have edited this article over time have generally come to it with expertise in only one or a few of the many disciplines in which self-organization has been theoretically explicated.  N2e (talk) 13:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

 * I would like to work on a complete make over of this article, but I'm new to both Wikipedia editing and SO. I'm starting my PhD in Computer Science and my research topics are Complex Systems in general and SO, swarm intelligence and complex networks being a little more specific (I still have to deepen in the field). Anyway, I'm currently working with biological and social systems so anything I can do, it will be my pleasure.TheSen (talk) 14:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

 * If you are willing to do some hard work to improve this article, I would encourage you to BE BOLD and go for it. Having said that, I think it best you describe proposed major changes (only the major ones) on the Talk page for a day or two so that you don't inadvertantly "gore someone's ox".  My only strong viewpoint on matters outside of self-organization in economics and the social sciences is that, clearly, the self-organization theoretical concept has been developed, under many different names, in many different disciplines (and even in the same discipline; e.g., in economics we have quite different terms from Adam Smith ("the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord", Wealth of Nations, 1776) to a number of economists in the 20th century ("grown order", to "spontaneous order," to "complex adaptive economics", etc.).  Thus, you and I have to be careful not to overrepresent the entire phenomenon in terms from computer science (you) or economics (me).  I will try to help you if you are interested, especially on the social science section as I'm familiar with a bit of the literature.  So, go for it. N2e (talk) 20:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

 * I didn't forget this, I'm a little busy this days but I'm preparing some changes. Hope to have something, even if it's short, for this weekend. --TheSen (talk) 08:21, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Rewriting the article
Hello there!

I changed my user account, I was previously TheSen. I was studying a little on the topic and although I cannot rewrite it completely I think that I can make some small change to start with. I will need some help writing some technical parts or parts from physics and linguistics for example.

To start with, I think the introduction (the part before the Overview) should be something like:

Now it includes some confusing ideas that can be explained later and misses to address the concept itself.

I would also change the Overview and historical notes, to include a few more references and deal with some of the key ideas as the 2nd law of the thermodinamics, attractors, noisy search and robustness/resilience. I'm working on it.

-- Juan, although this is a great improvement over previous introductions, I think it could be clearer, for these reasons:

1. Self organization is less a process of its own, than it is a process governing processes (i.e., a principle or physical law). 2. When one speaks of structures or patterns that "appear," one is likely to confuse self organization with emergence. 3. The distinction between local and global is misleading; self organized behavior is always interpreted as a global property of the system. (Self organized criticality, OTOH, makes a local-global distinction.) 4. " ... act at the same time" does not always apply. E.g., Braha & Bar-Yam (Braha, D. & Bar-Yam, Y. [2006]. “From Centrality to Temporary Fame: Dynamic Centrality in Complex Networks.” Complexity vol 12, no 2, pp 59-63) showed time dependence in communication networks, such that changing hub configurations can vary radically at short intervals of observation, even while the system remains relatively static over longer intervals, using the principle of multi-scale variety.

My suggested change:

"Self organization" descibes a system of cooperative elements, whose patterns of global behavior are distributed (i.e., no single element coordinates the activity) and self limiting.

What do you think?

Tom RayThomas h ray (talk) 17:30, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Please argue on the self-limiting property, because that might just be a special case in biology. --143.205.116.187 (talk) 09:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

JuanCano (talk) 18:34, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

There is an incorrect statement in the introduction where self organization is defined. The statement "The resulting organization is wholly decentralized or distributed over all the components of the system." Is incorrect because in physics self organized objects such as planetary systems and galaxies are clearly not decentralized.If you need a reference see Lee Smolins Life of the Cosmos. Also I think we could debate within this realm the basic definition, because as these objects begin to form they appear to be controlled by the agent "gravity." There are other factors at play but without gravity there would be no discussion. Actually I think there are different kinds of self organization and that such a comphensive definition doesn't work when you include physics.I favor the definition. "Something is self-organizing if, left to itself, it tends to become more organized." This definition was taken from http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/self-organization.html/.

Maxeng (talk) 10:07, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Collective animal behavior and brain behavior
please see this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_animal_behavior_and_brain_behavior

it is yet not very articulated article — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scienficreal (talk • contribs) 21:49, 20 March 2011 (UTC) --Scienficreal (talk) 22:01, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Self-Organization as an Explanation for the Emergence of 'Life' from 'Matter'
In an article titled: "What is 'Life' and What is 'Consciousness'" [Ref:Science & Culture, published by Indian Science News Association, Vol.70, No.7-8, July-August, 2004], Hasmukh K. Tank has proposed that Self-Organization seems to be the mechanism responsible for the emergence of 'Life' from 'Matter'. And our subjective experience of 'Mind' and 'Consciousness' may be arising from the "Balance of the electrostatic fields produced by individual neurons" similar to the 'dark energy' contained in the space. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.91.215.239 (talk) 14:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

translate to hebrew
I am starting translate this article to hebrew — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sharonr2012 (talk • contribs) 06:19, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Second Law of Thermodynamics and Causality
As the Arrow of time is defined through the Second Law of Thermodynamics, self-organization seems to either This needs to be discussed more closely in the article. I put a tag after this sentence: "This process is spontaneous: it is not directed or controlled by any agent or subsystem inside or outside of the system" as this is at best questionable. For instance, the Game of Life example was actually created, or caused, by Conway, who is outside the system, a computer whose energy is continuously caused by a power plant, etc. Hence, there are causes from outside the system. Self-organization seems to be a concept which is analogous to homeostasis but which according to the current article makes a controversial claim about homeostasis as a perpetual motion machine. From my POV, the article right now reads as a poster for a POV. Notice that the Spontaneous order article (what's the difference?) states, "Spontaneous order, also known as "self-organization", is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos." (my emphasis). Narssarssuaq (talk) 16:58, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * introduce an idea which is opposite to the Second Law, or
 * introduce an idea of causality which in breach with standard notions of such.
 * In response to these grievances, I added a Criticism section. Narssarssuaq (talk) 22:37, 17 September 2012 (UTC) I also added a short provision in the lead. Narssarssuaq (talk) 19:35, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

New Example for Self organizing Structure
You take a large flat stainless steel pan or Pot on a full gas Flame or stove. You add 3-5mm Water and allready cooked Rice. (was a pot of steamed chicken). Just enough that it rarely covers the bottom of the pan in one layer. On strong Boiling, the Lengthly Rice corns will align around Boiling Zones of one ricecorn size. the interesting Part of it:  it will form a stable GRID. The grains oscillate a bit. during cooking it is a Stable prismatic Grid. Several 5 cells large that is correct. a bit disturbing the rice is not completely cylindrically. Can someone please confirm this observation, and e.g. using oblique electric fields, etc. could one produce lenghy Dipol Nanoparticle Surface Grids, that then would be fixed burning the thing? A prismatic GRID IS ALWAYS of USE in nanostructure surfaces. For example, fill cavities with magnetic materials, produce storage, create optical filters, etc. the Grid is the only mechanically stable variant for the particles. On a random oscillation the particles align skew according to their density in a fitting grid. --Wikistallion (talk) 12:39, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

The concpt 'Self organization' is to be defined with all of the levels of existance carefully.In brief the levels of existance can be thought of as given below. 1. Inert world (with physical, chemical, crystal, organo-chemical complexities),2. Biological world (biomolecular, viral, cellular, multi-cellular,neural levels of coplexities), 3. social level,4. Noospherical (mental) level In each of the above qualitative levels there are micro, meso,macro dimensional aspects to be considered. This approach is based on prevalent genaral objective understanding of the coplexities of our Universe. உலோ.செந்தமிழ்க்கோதை (talk) 10:49, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

"Developing views"
The following material did not seem to fit as part of "History" (Descartes, etc) so I've brought it here. I suspect we have here a case of axes being finely ground, i.e. POV-pushing. If you know better then perhaps you can find a home for some of it. If you are sure it's nonsense then please say so. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:04, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

";Developing views Other views of self-organization in physical systems interpret it as a strictly accumulative construction process, commonly displaying an "S" curve history of development. As discussed somewhat differently by different researchers, local complex systems for exploiting energy gradients evolve from seeds of organization, through a succession of natural starting and ending phases for inverting their directions of development.  The accumulation of working processes which their exploratory parts construct as they exploit their gradient becomes the "learning", "organization" or "design" of the system as a physical artifact, such for an ecology or economy.  For example, A. Bejan's books and papers describe his approach as "Constructal Theory".   P. F. Henshaw's work on decoding net-energy system construction processes termed "Natural Systems Theory", uses various analytical methods to quantify and map them such as System Energy Assessment for taking true quantitative measures of whole complex energy using systems, and for anticipating their successions, such as Models Learning Change to permit adapting models to their emerging inverted designs.

G. Y. Georgiev argued for the principle of least (stationary) action in Physics, to define organization of a complex system as the state of the constraints determining the total action of the elements in a system. This is consistent with Gauss's principle of least constraint. The paths of the elements are straightened, consistent with Hertz's principle of least curvature. The state of a system with least average sum of actions of its elements is defined as its attractor. In open systems, where there is constant inflow and outflow of energy and elements, this final state is never reached, but the system always tends toward it. "

(end of removed material)

Cybernetics: Pask
Someone has removed the last two paragraphs of this article concerning Pask's contribution. Would they please say why. I think it should be restored.--Nick Green (talk) 02:36, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

 * OK, perhaps I had better begin with a brief history. I have been through the whole article, adding many references, editing for neutrality of tone, removing uncited material, focusing the text on the topic, and organizing the material by field. Someone else had already flagged the Cybernetics section as WP:OR; while not all the Pask text was uncited, it was among the least readily understood parts of the text. One of the first of many editing decisions was to remove the apparently uncited text from "This means, after sufficient duration as differences assert, ...... contribution to emergence reflects some of these constraints"; the remaining text went later as it seemed also far less accessible to readers than the rest of the article.

 * However, you are right that Pask is certainly notable. He is covered in a separate article, and to avoid being WP:UNDUE we should have a roughly similar level of coverage for him here as for other cybernetics theorists. I have accordingly made an attempt to summarize the removed material in a single paragraph of what I feel is a suitable length: this makes Cybernetics one of the longest sections in 'By field'. It is still undoubtedly a difficult read for people outside the field: this may be inevitable, and even editors with higher degrees and AS levels in Use of English may find it tricky to deal with. If I have damaged the sense then I hope we can collaborate on the wording, perhaps based on 'new' reliable sources.

 * The whole Cybernetics section remains harder to read than most other sections; I wonder if it would be possible to create a new technical article on, say, Self-organization in cybernetics, leaving a 'Main article' link, and to summarize it more briefly here in simpler language.Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:45, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

 * Actually, that topic more than justifies an article in its own right. I've gone ahead and created that article with all the cybernetics material that had been here. It is a bare start and would benefit from further explanation, examples and illustration. I think, therefore, we should remove all the explanation from the cybernetics coverage here, and instead just name and wikilink the pioneers and their theories. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:51, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok Chiswick Chap and thanks for restoring the main sense of Pask's perspective. The article on Gordon Pask does indeed cover some of this- the points about Rescher Coherence Theory of Truth and forces at boundaries for example. Robert Laughlin makes the point that physical law arises from self-organization (intensive properties being shown to be extensive, for example) but so far his view hasn't been mentioned anywhere. Further, to my mind Coherence and Entanglement are at the root of all this and suggest the way forward for this work eg in support of Self Assembly in Nanotechnology.--Nick Green (talk) 20:01, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

 * Laughlin seems well worth citing somehow, perhaps in an article on Self-organisation in physics ... Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:36, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes indeed, his Nobel work On Fractional Quantization- Noble address applies a concept of collective emergence (which I take as evidence of a Self-Organised Coherence through message passing or Paskian Conversation) and is discussed in lectures on You Tube and his book "A Different Universe" but I'm currently not familiar enough with his work to add something to the SO in Physics section. Maybe one of his students might?--Nick Green (talk) 07:23, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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"a system cannot spontaneously increase its order"
The present article states (as of Nov 30 2018) that "A system cannot spontaneously increase its order without an external relationship that decreases order elsewhere in the system (e.g. through consuming the low-entropy energy of a battery and diffusing high-entropy heat)."

But this statement appears evidently false when we consider, for example, water spontaneously turning into crystalline ice as it cools, which can occur without any associated increase in entropy elsewhere. This happens because below 0 C at standard atmospheric pressure the "ordered" state that constitutes crystalline ice is more probable than the state of "disordered" liquid water. In other terms, the crystalline macrostate is identified with more microstates than the liquid macrostate. Nevertheless under those conditions the solid has, one may reasonably say, more "order" than the liquid from which it formed.

The problem with the statement in the article is that "order" is not well defined. High degree of order is being used in that sentence as though it were synonymous with "low entropy." The subject of the article is self-organization; we do not call the formation of ice from water an example of self organization in that sense.

The law of increasing entropy says that what is most probable will inevitably happen. This is invariably true for macro states of large systems (>= 10^23 parts) if not always for the far smaller ones we sometimes study in connection with the mathematics of probability. Dratman (talk) 23:07, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose to merge Spontaneous order into this article Self-organization, because both articles essentially talk about the same phenomenon, and Self-organization already has more details and covers a broader viewpoint than just the social sciences, which includes much of what is already in the Spontaneous order article. It seems that "Spontaneous order" is simply another name for Self-organization that is commonly used in the social sciences. 216.125.251.48 (talk) 19:34, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

A Self-Organization need not be a Spontaneous order: it can be theoretically structured in advance.--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 14:56, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Closing, given the uncontested objection and no support. Klbrain (talk) 10:20, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Criticism section need correction and "By field" contextualization
The criticism of 1985 not make sense today (!), there are a lot of scientific evidence and applications for the original concept of self-organization (formal definition at Non-equilibrium thermodynamics), see for example this 2020 article on the evidence of Thermodynamic Self-Organization, in the field of metallurgy: https://doi.org/10.3390/e22030372

Perhaps some other criticism exist in nowadays, but in other fields, where the evidence is still disputed (is not a "field consensus"). As the main section of the article is By field, important to enclose the criticism in its field to avoid confusion. Krauss (talk) 01:33, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Missing of the modern formal definition
About "Overview", "Principles" and "History" sections. While general systems theory and cybernetics were important, welcoming the concept of self-organization (at that time still vague and informal definition), in overcoming the empire of reductionism in Science until the ~ 1970s, today self-organization is a well-established and well-defined concept — that found in non-equilibrium thermodynamics its most accurate formulation, in the analysis of dissipative structures.

With the Chemistry Nobel Prize in 1977 (won by Ilya Prigogine by your formal definitions for dissipative structures and self-organization) the research on self-organized systems gained visibility, credibility and has grown enormously... And, since then, it has ceased to be a marginalized and diffuse concept, to be a central, well-defined and widely accepted concept.

Summarizing: in its history, the self-organization concept was not born precise and well defined, there was a slow evolution and a slow accumulation of studies and evidences from ~1940s, until a more precise scientific definition emerged in the late ~1970s. It was only then that in the Hard-Sciences it was more widely accepted, starting to support (as solid and consensual foundation) broader theories and applications.

Krauss (talk) 02:12, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

 * So by all means, do feel free to improve the article, with secondary sources that backup these assertions. With a background and undergrad in the hard sciences, I did my MA work in the so-called social sciences (economics) and, in doing my thesis work on self-organization in social systems, found the literature quite balkanized between disciplines.  With entirely different terminological and historical developments, even though similar concepts were being looked at.  That was the first decade of the 2000s.  It's better today, but still hard to say there is a "solid and consensual" foundation across the many academic disciplines where self-organization is, or should be, significant.

 * Look forward to seeing your sources that back up even the hard-sciences disciplines as any sort of a common foundation. Cheers.  N2e (talk) 03:01, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Suspected original research
I tagged a paragraph in the history section as potential original research (or perhaps synthesis). The only "citation" it gives is not a citation at all, but a description of research in the form of a database query on published research. I'm copying the section below. The rest of the tags were added by others. -Amcbride (talk) 15:52, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Self-organization was associated with general systems theory in the 1960s, but did not become commonplace in the scientific literature until physicists Hermann Haken et al. and complex systems researchers adopted it in a greater picture from cosmology Erich Jantsch, chemistry with dissipative system, biology and sociology as autopoiesis to system thinking in the following 1980s (Santa Fe Institute) and 1990s (complex adaptive system), until our days with the disruptive emerging technologies profounded by a rhizomatic network theory.

Proposed merge of Spontaneous order into Self-organization
Comments on both talk pages refer to this concept covering the same scope, so should they be merged? czar 02:48, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose for now. This article starts with Self-organization, also called (in the social sciences) spontaneous order, and spontaneous order starts with Spontaneous order, also named self-organization in the hard sciences. By the lead sentences (and following content), it is clear that "self-organization" deals with the hard sciences and "spontaneous order" with the soft sciences, so these articles *are* about different topics. Per User:Rollo44's comment on Talk:Spontaneous order/Archive 1, I might support merging the two into Emergence, but I think they would immediately be natural split targets if merged, "emergence" in natural and social systems are somewhat qualitatively different from each other. Duckmather (talk) 05:56, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. I think, it's important to explain, that both phenomena are basically the same and are simply discovered in different disciplines of science. The fact, that systems with humans as parts do simply follow essentially the same rules like matter.
 * Another argument relates to the significant argument of order versus entropy. I guess, it would make sense, to address the problem in one article, avoiding double standard.
 * @Rollo44 A merging with Emergence might be too ambitious. What might be interesting is the fact, that this would offer a "why" to the self assembly topic. Henning65 (talk) 08:14, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Apa benar kesalahan account harus ada jaminan keuangan dari peminjam?
Apa benar kesalahan account harus di tangung peminjam dengan jaminan 2001:448A:3051:13E6:C1C6:7A68:2506:76A3 (talk) 06:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Self-organization


text:
Talk:172

[Untitled]
I just found out that I've been featured so prominently on an article. I'm speechless! What an honor! 172 09:24, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi,

First off, I'm new; and I want to do good here.

I just noticed a summary deletion by "Trey Stone" in the History_of_Indonesia page of quotes by Noam Chomsky. I restored them. This is my first venture into potentially controversial editing. I also noted that you've been on his case, and thought I'd give you a heads up and ask if you think I'm understanding the norms here...

Davenbelle 01:13, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Morganus Maximus
Morganus Maximus, leader of a Roman rebellion, takes power from Marcus Aurelius after assassinating him and four other prominent Roman leaders. Really?--93.72.154.185 (talk) 19:26, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:172


text:
Kaizen

Kaizen (改善) is a concept referring to business activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. Kaizen also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life coaching, government, manufacturing, and banking.

By improving standardized programs and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste and redundancies (lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first practiced in Japanese businesses after World War II, influenced in part by American business and quality-management teachers, and most notably as part of The Toyota Way. It has since spread throughout the world and has been applied to environments outside of business and productivity.

Kaizen may also be referred to as zero investment improvement (ZII) due to its utilization of existing resources.

Overview
The Japanese word kaizen means 'improvement' or 'change for better' (from 改 kai - change, revision; and 善 zen - virtue, goodness) with the inherent meaning of either 'continuous' or 'philosophy' in Japanese dictionaries and in everyday use. The word refers to any improvement, one-time or continuous, large or small, in the same sense as the English word improvement. However, given the common practice in Japan of labeling industrial or business improvement techniques with the word kaizen, particularly the practices spearheaded by Toyota, the word kaizen in English is typically applied to measures for implementing continuous improvement, especially those with a "Japanese philosophy". The discussion below focuses on such interpretations of the word, as frequently used in the context of modern management discussions. Two kaizen approaches have been distinguished:

Point kaizen
Point kaizen is one of the most commonly implemented types of kaizen. It happens very quickly and usually without much planning. As soon as something is found broken or incorrect, quick and immediate measures are taken to correct the issues. These measures are generally small, isolated and easy to implement, however, they can have a huge impact.

In some cases, it is also possible that the positive effects of point kaizen in one area can reduce or eliminate benefits of point kaizen in some other area.

Examples of point kaizen include a shop inspection by a supervisor who finds broken materials or other small issues, and then asks the owner of the shop to perform a quick kaizen (5S) to rectify those issues, or a line worker who notices a potential improvement in efficiency by placing the materials needed in another order or closer to the production line in order to minimize downtime.

System kaizen
System kaizen is accomplished in an organized manner and is devised to address system-level problems in an organization or any production factory.

It is an upper-level strategic planning method for a short period of time.

Line kaizen
Line kaizen refers to communication of improvements between the upstream and downstream of a process. This can be extended in several ways.

Plane kaizen
This is the next upper level of line kaizen, in that several lines are connected together. In modern terminologies, this can also be described as a value stream, where instead of traditional departments, the organization is structured into product lines or families and value streams. It can be visualized as changes or improvements made to one line being implemented to multiple other lines or processes.

Cube kaizen
Cube kaizen describes the situation where all the points of the planes are connected to each other and no point is disjointed from any other. This would resemble a situation where Lean has spread across the entire organization. Improvements are made up and down through the plane, or upstream or downstream, including the complete organization, suppliers and customers. This might require some changes in the standard business processes as well.

The 5S movement
The 5S are primarily aimed at the workshop workplaces, whereby the workplace is understood as the place where the value-adding processes in the company take place.
 * Seiri
 * Create order: remove everything that is not necessary from your workspace!

 * Seiton
 * Love of order: organize things and keep them in their proper place!

 * Seiso
 * Cleanliness: keep your workplace clean!

 * Seiketsu
 * Personal sense of order: make 5S a habit by setting standards!

 * Shitsuke
 * Discipline: make cleanliness and order your personal concern!

The 7M checklist (Ishikawa diagram)
These are the seven most important factors that must be checked again and again: The original 5M method was expanded to include the last two factors, as the influence of management in the system and measurability are of a certain scope. (See also the Ishikawa diagram as a graphical representation of the 7Ms).
 * 1) Man
 * 2) Machine
 * 3) Material
 * 4) Method
 * 5) Milieu/environment
 * 6) Management
 * 7) Measurability

The 7W checklist
The 7W checklist possibly goes back to Cicero as an original tool for rhetoric:

 * What
 * is to be done?

 * Who
 * does it?

 * Why
 * do it?

 * How
 * is it done?

 * When
 * is it done?

 * Where
 * should it be done?

 * Why
 * is it not done differently?

Related to the 7W questionnaire is the principle of "Go to the source" (Genchi Genbutsu). This means asking "Why?" 5 times in the event of undesirable results or errors in order to find a solution. Furthermore, managers should get an idea of the situation on site, for example a production process, and not make decisions from afar.

The W questions are used in a wide variety of areas, for example when analyzing texts, as an aid in defining projects as well as in work analysis and, as a result, in defining work content.

In the field of quality management, this principle is used in failure mode and effects analysis to identify potential weaknesses.

The three Mu
The three Mu form the basis for the loss philosophy of the Toyota Production System (TPS). In the context of this loss philosophy, the three Mu are seen as negative focal points of the loss potential and should therefore be avoided.

 * Muda
 * Waste, see the seven Muda

 * Mura
 * Deviations in the processes (also imbalance)

 * Muri
 * Overloading of employees and machines

The seven Muda
The seven types of waste (seven Muda) as typical sources of loss.

The waste itself (Muda) is the obvious cause of losses. A distinction is made between seven types of waste that occur almost everywhere in the company.

 * Muda due to overproduction
 * Produce more than necessary.

 * Muda due to waiting time
 * Inactive hands of an employee. Process timing not optimized.

 * Muda due to unnecessary transportation
 * Movement of materials or products does not add value.

 * Muda due to production of faulty parts
 * Defective products disrupt the production flow and require expensive rework.

 * Muda due to excessive storage
 * Finished and semi-finished products, vendor parts and materials stored as inventory do not add value.

 * Muda due to unnecessary movement
 * Awkward, unergonomic and unnecessary movements consume time, lead to fatigue and increase the risk of injury.

 * Muda due to an unfavorable manufacturing process
 * The additional equipment of products or services with features that are neither desired nor paid for by the customer.

Just-in-Time (JIT)

 * This principle is a logistics-oriented decentralized organization and control concept that aims to supply and dispose of materials for production on demand and thus ensures the precise delivery of raw materials or products of the required quality in the desired quantity (and packaging) to the desired location at the time they are actually needed. This eliminates storage costs; the remaining administrative effort can be reduced to a relative minimum.
 * An enhancement of "just-in-time" is the so-called "just in sequence" (JIS). Based on the JIT principle, the products are also delivered to the customer in the correct sequence.

JIT is now standard throughout the automotive industry. It is used, for example, for interior parts (seats, airbags, steering wheels, dashboards) or painted parts. The generally higher transportation and handling costs caused by JIT or JIS are offset by savings in inventory, storage or floor space costs.

Total Productive Maintenance

 * Constant monitoring of the production lines
 * Attempt to continuously improve the lines
 * Elimination of waste of any kind

For more information, see the article Total productive maintenance.

Benefits and tradeoffs
Kaizen is a daily process, the purpose of which goes beyond simple productivity improvement. It is also a process that, when done correctly, humanizes the workplace, eliminates overly hard work (muri), and teaches people how to perform experiments on their work using the scientific method and how to learn to spot and eliminate waste in business processes. In all, the process suggests a humanized approach to workers and to increasing productivity: "The idea is to nurture the company's people as much as it is to praise and encourage participation in kaizen activities." Successful implementation requires "the participation of workers in the improvement." People at all levels of an organization participate in kaizen, from the CEO down to janitorial staff, as well as external stakeholders when applicable. Kaizen is most commonly associated with manufacturing operations, as at Toyota, but has also been used in non-manufacturing environments. The format for kaizen can be individual, suggestion system, small group, or large group. At Toyota, it is usually a local improvement within a workstation or local area and involves a small group in improving their own work environment and productivity. This group is often guided through the kaizen process by a line supervisor; sometimes this is the line supervisor's key role. Kaizen on a broad, cross-departmental scale in companies generates total quality management and frees human efforts through improving productivity using machines and computing power.

While kaizen (at Toyota) usually delivers small improvements, the culture of continual aligned small improvements and standardization yields large results in terms of overall improvement in productivity. This philosophy differs from the "command and control" improvement programs (e.g., Business Process Improvementundefined) of the mid-20th century. Kaizen methodology includes making changes and monitoring results, then adjusting. Large-scale pre-planning and extensive project scheduling are replaced by smaller experiments, which can be rapidly adapted as new improvements are suggested.

In modern usage, it is designed to address a particular issue over the course of a week and is referred to as a "kaizen blitz" or "kaizen event". These are limited in scope, and issues that arise from them are typically used in later blitzes. A person who makes a large contribution in the successful implementation of kaizen during kaizen events is awarded the title of "Zenkai". In the 21st century, business consultants in various countries have engaged in widespread adoption and sharing of the kaizen framework as a way to help their clients restructure and refocus their business processes.

History
The small-step work improvement approach was developed in the USA under Training Within Industry program (TWI Job Methods). Instead of encouraging large, radical changes to achieve desired goals, these methods recommended that organizations introduce small improvements, preferably ones that could be implemented on the same day. The major reason was that during WWII there was neither time nor resources for large and innovative changes in the production of war equipment. The essence of the approach came down to improving the use of the existing workforce and technologies.

As part of the aid to allied nations after the war, not directly including the Marshall Plan after World War II, American occupation forces brought in experts to help with the rebuilding of Japanese industry while the Civil Communications Section (CCS) developed a management training program that taught statistical control methods as part of the overall material. Homer Sarasohn and Charles Protzman developed and taught this course in 1949–1950. Sarasohn recommended W. Edwards Deming for further training in statistical methods.

The Economic and Scientific Section (ESS) group was also tasked with improving Japanese management skills and Edgar McVoy was instrumental in bringing Lowell Mellen to Japan to properly install the Training Within Industry (TWI) programs in 1951. The ESS group had a training film to introduce TWI's three "J" programs: Job Instruction, Job Methods and Job Relations. Titled "Improvement in Four Steps" (Kaizen eno Yon Dankai), it thus introduced kaizen to Japan.

For the pioneering, introduction, and implementation of kaizen in Japan, the Emperor of Japan awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure to Dr. Deming in 1960. Subsequently, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) instituted the annual Deming Prizes for achievement in quality and dependability of products. On October 18, 1989, JUSE awarded the Deming Prize to Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL), based in the US, for its exceptional accomplishments in process and quality-control management, making it the first company outside Japan to win the Deming Prize.

Kaoru Ishikawa took up this concept to define how continuous improvement or kaizen can be applied to processes, as long as all the variables of the process are known.

Implementation
The Toyota Production System is known for kaizen, where all line personnel are expected to stop their moving production line in case of any abnormality, and, along with their supervisor, suggest an improvement to resolve the abnormality which may initiate a kaizen. This feature is called Jidoka or "autonomation".

The cycle of kaizen activity can be defined as: Plan → Do → Check → Act. This is also known as the Shewhart cycle, Deming cycle, or PDCA.

Another technique used in conjunction with PDCA is the five whys, which is a form of root cause analysis in which the user asks a series of five "why" questions about a failure that has occurred, basing each subsequent question on the answer to the previous. There are normally a series of causes stemming from one root cause, and they can be visualized using fishbone diagrams or tables. The five whys can be used as a foundational tool in personal improvement.

Masaaki Imai made the term famous in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success.

In the Toyota Way Fieldbook, Liker and Meier discuss the kaizen blitz and kaizen burst (or kaizen event) approaches to continuous improvement. A kaizen blitz, or rapid improvement, is a focused activity on a particular process or activity. The basic concept is to identify and quickly remove waste. Another approach is that of the kaizen burst, a specific kaizen activity on a particular process in the value stream.

In the 1990s, Professor Iwao Kobayashi published his book 20 Keys to Workplace Improvement and created a practical, step-by-step improvement framework called "the 20 Keys". He identified 20 operations focus areas which should be improved to attain holistic and sustainable change. He went further and identified the five levels of implementation for each of these 20 focus areas. Four of the focus areas are called Foundation Keys. According to the 20 Keys, these foundation keys should be launched ahead of the others in order to form a strong constitution in the company. The four foundation keys are:

 * Key 1 – Cleaning and Organizing to Make Work Easy, which is based on the 5S methodology.
 * Key 2 – Goal Alignment/Rationalizing the System
 * Key 3 – Small Group Activities
 * Key 4 – Leading and Site Technology

Related topics

 * Business process re-engineering
 * Experiential learning
 * Hansei
 * Kaikaku
 * Kanban, Kanban Method
 * Management fad
 * Mottainai, a sense of regret concerning waste
 * Muda (Japanese term)
 * Overall equipment effectiveness
 * Quality circle
 * Six Sigma
 * Statistical process control
 * Theory of constraints
 * Total productive maintenance
 * TRIZ, the theory of inventive problem solving
 * Visual control
 * Ikigai

title: Kaizen


text:
Open system

Open system may refer to:

Technical term

 * Open system (computing), one of a class of computers and associated software that provides some combination of interoperability, portability and open software standards, particularly Unix and Unix-like systems
 * Open system (systems theory), in the natural and social sciences, a process that exchanges material, energy, people, capital or information with its environment
 * Open system (thermodynamics), in thermodynamics and physics, a system where matter and energy can enter or leave, in contrast to a closed system where energy can enter or leave but matter can not
 * Open system (control theory), a feedforward system that does not have any feedback loop to control its output in a control system
 * Open system, in management science a system that is capable of self-maintenance on the basis of throughput of resources from the environment
 * Open system of learning, where information is sourced from multiple sources
 * Open government, system
 * Open-system environment reference model, one of the first reference models for enterprise architecture
 * Open Distribution system (Example: Peer-to-peer file sharing system)

Proper name

 * Open Systems Interconnection (IT company)
 * Open Systems Accounting Software (product), an accounting and business software
 * Open Systems International, supplier of open automation solutions for utilities in the electric, oil & gas, transport, and water industries
 * Open-source software, system (product)
 * Open publication, system (non-standard term)

The system in which the exchange of both mass and energy take place through surrounding environment

title: Open system


text:
Gregor Gysi

Gregor Florian Gysi (born 16 January 1948) is a German attorney, former president of the Party of the European Left and a prominent politician of The Left (Die Linke) political party.

He belonged to the reformist wing of the governing Socialist Unity Party of Germany at the time of the pro-democracy transition inspired by then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He has strongly denied allegations that he used to assist the Stasi, the East German secret police. He was the last leader of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and led the effort that transformed it into the post-Communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), forerunner of The Left.

Family background
Gysi was born in Berlin-Lichtenberg in East Berlin, Soviet Zone of Germany. His father was Klaus Gysi, a high-ranking official in East Germany who served as the Minister of Culture from 1966 to 1973. His mother, Irene Olga Lydia Gysi (née Lessing; 1912–2007), was the sister of political activist Gottfried Lessing, who was married to British writer and Nobel laureate Doris Lessing during his exile in Southern Rhodesia. The surname "Gysi" is of Swiss-German origin. He is of partial Jewish ancestry; his paternal grandmother was Jewish, as was one of his maternal great-grandfathers. One of his maternal great-grandmothers was Russian. His sister, Gabriele, is an actress who left East Germany in 1985. Today, she is chief dramaturge at the Volksbühne in Berlin.

Pre-1989
Gysi's political career began in the then-ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) of East Germany, to which he was admitted in 1967. In 1971 he became a licensed attorney, and during the 1970s and 1980s defended several prominent dissidents, including Rudolf Bahro, Robert Havemann, Ulrike Poppe, and Bärbel Bohley.

In addition to his legal work, Gysi emerged as one of East Germany's leading Gorbachev-inspired political reformists within the SED, especially towards the end of the 1980s. In 1989, he and a group of lawyers presented a counter-draft to the government's Travel Bill, which authorised mass public demonstrations. This led to a mass rally on East-Berlin's Alexanderplatz on 4 November in which he spoke and called for reforms, including free elections. In December 1989, he became a member of a special SED party session investigating official corruption and abuse of power.

Fall of Communism

In an interview conducted in 2011, Gysi recalled that in late 1989 he had become the attorney for several of the people who were arrested in the first early public protests. As such he became known to leading figures in the Artistic and Cultural unions and was contacted by a group of actresses about the legality of a large demonstration. He recalls having examined the laws and advising them that they could apply for such a permit from the police and the worst outcome would be that their request could be denied, but they would not be breaking any law or doing anything illegal. He further recalls assisting the group in requesting and completing the appropriate forms and paperwork required for such a permit.

In December 1989, Egon Krenz, the last Communist leader of East Germany, resigned all of his posts. Gysi was elected as the party's chairman. He did not, however, become the leader of East Germany; the SED had abandoned its monopoly of power on 1 December. In his first speech, Gysi admitted that the SED had brought the country to ruin, repudiating everything it had done since 1949. He declared that the party needed to adopt a new form of socialism.

To that end, he immediately set about transforming the SED into a democratic socialist party. Before the year was out, the last hardliners in the SED leadership had either resigned or been pushed out. On 16 December, the SED was renamed the Socialist Unity Party – Party of Democratic Socialism (SED-PDS), it later became simply the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Gysi remained as party chairman, and in March 1990 was elected to the Volkskammer in the first free election of that body, serving there until it was dissolved upon German reunification on 3 October 1990.

Post-unification
In the first post-reunification all-German elections, he was elected to the Bundestag from Berlin's Hellersdorf–Marzahn constituency, and served there until 2000. He remained chairman of the PDS through 1998, and then from 1998 to 2000 served as chairman of the party's parliamentary group.

In 1992, it was alleged Gysi was an informer (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter, IM) of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (the Stasi). He denied these allegations, and the matter was largely dropped due to his parliamentary immunity. In 1995, the Hamburg state court ruled in Gysi's favour in a complaint against Bärbel Bohley, Gysi's former client, who had accused him of Stasi collaboration. However, the allegations were raised again in 1996, and this time the Bundestag voted to revoke his immunity and proceed with an investigation.

In 1998, the Bundestag's immunity committee concluded that Gysi had been a collaborator with the Stasi from 1978 to 1989 under the name IM Notar, and fined him 8,000 Deutsche Mark. However, both the Free Democratic Party and his own PDS disputed the verdict, and Gysi appealed against the finding. Despite the affair, he retained his seat in the Bundestag in the 1998 elections.

In 2000, he resigned as chairman of the PDS's parliamentary group, but continued as an active member of the party. Following the victory of a "Red-red" (SPD-PDS) coalition in the 2001 Berlin state election, he was elected Senator for Economics, Labour, and Women's Issues and Deputy Mayor. He emphasised practical issues and advocated the reinstitution of some of what he sees as the better aspects of East Germany's system, such as extended child-care hours and a longer school day. After a scandal involving his use of airline "bonus miles" he had acquired on trips as a Bundestag member, he resigned on 31 July 2002 from the Berlin city government. The resignation was a blow to his public "can-do" image, but he has recovered from that to some extent in the wake of increasing public opposition to a number of new policies of the federal government, like the Hartz reforms lowering unemployment benefits to the levels of mere subsistence welfare, which he strongly opposes.

In late-2004, he survived brain surgery and a heart attack. Formerly a heavy smoker, Gysi quit smoking as a result of surviving the heart attack.

Gysi remained the PDS's undisputed front man in many people's minds and continued to appear in public. In May 2005, when Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder planned to call an early election in September, many prominent PDS leaders including chair Lothar Bisky called on Gysi to front their campaign. He was a lead candidate of the PDS, and returned to the Bundestag as the member for Berlin-Treptow-Köpenick. The PDS fought the election in an alliance with the new western-based ElectoralAlternative Labour and Social Justice (WASG), under the new name Left Party.PDS, with Gysi at times sharing a platform with WASG's Oskar Lafontaine, former finance minister (in the first months of the Schröder government) and formerly party leader of the SPD. In June 2007, the PDS and WASG formally merged to form a united party called The Left.

In 2014, Gysi wrote his analysis on the contemporary Ukraine crisis in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, where he described similarities between the United States and Russia in their transgressions of international law. Gysi calls for "a new Ostpolitik" to prevent war and promote "democracy and freedom in Russia". In 2015, Gysi was one of the leading supporters of Greece during the Greek government-debt crisis. He described the current German government as "blackmailers".

Gysi is an outspoken supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations. This is due to his belief in the need for "functioning and democratically legitimate global politics."

In the 2021 German federal elections Gysi once more won his constituency of Berlin-Treptow-Köpenick. While the Left came up short of the five percent electoral threshold, his win, together with those of Gesine Lötzsch in Berlin-Lichtenberg and Sören Pellmann in Leipzig II, qualified the party for list seats proportional to its vote. Under longstanding German law, a party can bypass the electoral threshold by winning three constituency seats.

Media activities
Gysi is one of the most present politicians in German entertainment Media. He regularly appears on political entertainment talk shows and is host of conversation programs himself.

In 2019, Gregor Gysi stated to the Bundestag administration that he had received fees for almost 90 lectures, discussions and conversations. On average he has one appearance per week. He also earns money from jobs as lawyer and book publishing.

Stasi informant "IM Notar"
Gysi continues to deny allegations, which first surfaced in 1992, that he was a Stasi informant ("inoffizieller Mitarbeiter"), though there are no doubts about their close cooperation. Invited in 2017 to spell out who, other than himself, "IM Notar" could possibly be, he replied that he had a strong suspicion, backed by a huge amount of information, adding pointedly that whenever the allegations that he himself was "IM Notar" have come before a court, he has "always won". In the absence of certain proof, he is not prepared to disclose the identity of the true "IM Notar".

"Toiletgate" (2014)
In November 2014, after being invited by Inge Höger and Annette Groth, also members of The Left (Die Linke) to talk with them in the Bundestag, journalists Max Blumenthal and David Sheen learned that Gysi tried to cancel the meetings on the grounds that Blumenthal and Sheen held extremist views from which he wished to dissociate the party.

Gysi fled, followed by the two men and other parliamentary members down a parliament corridor and into a bathroom in an incident referred to as "toiletgate". After this event, Blumenthal and Sheen were banned from ever setting foot in the Bundestag again.

Comments on Germans and Immigration (2015)
In a 2015 interview, Gysi stated that "Every year more Germans die than are born. Fortunately, this is due to the fact that the Nazis do not reproduce particularly well and therefore, we depend on immigrants from other countries." The comparison of all Germans to Nazis and the statement that it was good that Germans had a declining birth rate generated significant criticism from the public.

title: Gregor Gysi