(Many of the concepts that) have dominated scientific thinking for three hundred years, are based upon the understanding that at smaller and smaller scales—both in space and in time—physical systems become simple, smooth and without detail. A more careful articulation of these ideas would note that the fine scale structure of planets, materials and atoms is not without detail. However, for many problems, such detail becomes irrelevant at the larger scale. Since the details (become) irrelevant (at such larger scales), formulating theories in a way that assumes that the detail does not exist yields the same results as (theories that do not make this assumption).
– Yaneer Bar-Yam
So when I hear the conjecture - and it is pure conjecture - that self organizing systems emerge from complexity in the absence of an underlying orgnizing theory (one that is fundamentally deterministic at the lowest levels of behaviour) or worse a theory of self organizaiton quote from a populist commerical magazine I return to this quote.
