Self-Organization

"Since its very inception, social work has been considered an organizationally based profession, with the majority of its workforce employed within formal organizations. Whether in nonprofit, for-profit, or governmental agencies, the practical realities of human service organizations are a central element of professional social work. This book explores the climate and culture of these agencies and provides essential information for surviving and thriving in this setting. It prepares students for their future careers so that they will feel empowered in their work and be able to fulfill their responsibilities toward organizational, community, and social change. Using real-life examples, the authors examine the internal structures of management, financing, and supervision and discuss common conflicts between agencies and professionals. The book’s straightforward tone and practical advice make it an asset to anyone entering human service organizations.

This new edition contains updated examples, case studies, and references. It also contains valuable information on the effects of the recent financial crisis on human service organizations. Agencies now face increased caseloads and more complex social problems with fewer resources and less money. Understanding how these events have changed the nature of human service organizations will allow students to be better prepared for the work ahead of them.

Features

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Expanded content on the practical aspects of organizational theory and suggestions for developing leadership skills
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Updated examples, case studies, and references throughout the book
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Key points and discussion questions following each chapter
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Updated instructor’s manual available online as a PDF or Word document"

This study focusses on aspects related to carbonate build-ups in an upper Paleozoic succession in the south central Norwegian Barents Sea. Seismic and well data are used to map and characterize the protozoan and heterozoan carbonate build-ups in order to assess the factors that control their distribution within the Gipsdalen- and Bjarmeland Groups. The main objectives are (1) to describe, compare, and contrast geomorphological characteristics of the carbonate succession on the Bjarmeland and Finnmark Platforms, (2) to determine the controlling factors on the distribution of the carbonate build-up development, and lastly (3) examine the impact of evaporites on the distribution and development of the carbonate build-ups.

The upper section of the Gipsdalen Group consists of protozoan carbonates and evaporites with occasional carbonate build-ups that were deposited in an arid-warm marine environment in a global icehouse period. The Bjarmeland Group consists of heterozoan carbonates with build-ups deposited in post-glacial environment. Previous studies have suggested that faults play a role in the distribution of carbonate build-ups in the Norwegian Barents Sea.

The two areas on the Finnmark Platform (north and south) have been used in order to compare against two areas on Bjarmeland Platform (east and west). The carbonate build-up sequence observed on the eastern Bjarmeland Platform is comparable with the build-up sequence on the northern Finnmark Platform. The two areas share similarities as both are located on footwall uplifts. The geomorphology of these carbonate units are characterized as large build-up complexes. In contrast, the geomorphology of the western Bjarmeland Platform and the southern Finnmark Platform differs significantly. These units consist of polygonal build-up morphologies of reticulated arrangement with cellular structures of various scales; this depositional pattern is similar in architecture to modern patch and pinnacle reef systems observed in Holocene carbonate systems (e.g. Abrolhos Islands in Western Australia). The similarities defining these elements are that carbonate build-ups stack vertically above the layered evaporite sequence of the Gipsdalen Group. The layered evaporite sequences are observed on both platforms where salt pillows are a main characteristic. The carbonate build-ups deposit vertically above thin units of evaporites, opposed to laterally absent where the salt pillows are present, suggesting that salt has been displaced by the weight of the growing build-up. The result supports antecedent topography as a dominant component affecting the carbonate build-up succession in the eastern Bjarmeland Platform and the northern Finnmark Platform. Furthermore, the build-up development in the two areas on western Bjarmeland Platform, and southern Finnmark Platform, has been controlled by physical conditions influenced by a combination of biotic self-organization, fossil reef growth and karst-induced structures caused by dissolution of the underlying carbonate strata. The current geomorphology of the carbonate build-up succession has been enhanced due to remobilization of the mobile evaporite unit as a result of differential loading by the carbonate build-ups.

Özet
Matematiğin mimarlık dahil olmak üzere farklı disiplinlerle girdiği sıkı ilişki ve teknolojinin gün geçtikçe gelişmesiyle kullanım alanı artan bilgisayar destekli tasarım teknolojisi sayesinde tasarım sürecinde farklı matematiksel modellerin kullanılması mümkün olmuştur. Matematiksel modellerle strüktür tasarımı, geometri ve malzeme parametrelerini ön plana çıkarmıştır. 
Karmaşıklık kuramının sistemdeki dinamiklerin modellenmesi açısından strüktür tasarımındaki rolü önemlidir. Birbirinden farklı birçok parametrenin olması ve bunlar arasındaki ilişkilerin keşif süreci taşıyıcı sistemi tasarlanabilir bir sistem yapmıştır.  Geometri, bu sistemin formunu oluşturur ve ilk dikkat çeken parametredir. Yaratılan her form bir geometri içerir ve formun ayakta durabilmesi için de strüktür tasarımına ihtiyaç vardır. Mimarlıkta geometriyle birlikte malzeme, tasarımın dokusunun, biçiminin ve binanın görünümünün oluşmasında temel bileşenlerdendir.
Strüktür tasarımında en temel yöntem olan sonlu elemanlar analizi ışığında, arup optimizeri, dinamik rahatlama, evrimsel şekil optimizeri ve evrimsel strüktür optimizeri incelenmiştir. Bu analizler sonucu ortaya çıkan zincir eğrisi, bükülme, minimal yüzey ve nurbs modelleri araştırılmıştır. Arup optimizeri, tüm sistemde kendi kendini organize etmesini sağlayacak en uygun tekrar elemanlarını seçer ve bu elemanları tek tek analiz eder. Dinamik rahatlama, malzemenin yerçekimi ile kendiliğinden şekil almasını sağlayan topolojik şekildeki kemer yapının optimizasyonunu sağlar. Evrimsel şekil optimizeri ise serbest forma en uygun alanı seçmek için en az deplasman yaptıracak strüktürel eleman yerleşmesini analiz eder. Evrimsel strüktür optimizeri ise sistemde vektörel gerilimi azaltmaya yönelik analizler yapar.
Strüktür modellerinden zincir eğrisi modelinde zincir, yerçekimine karşı oluşan eğrinin formunu alır. Bükülme, malzemenin kırılma noktasının gelişen teknoloji ve yeni malzemelerle eşik değerinin artması sonucunda, eski kırılma noktasının bükülmesiyle oluşan formdur. Minimal yüzeyler, minimum yüzey-gerilim potansiyel enerjisine sahip ve alan olarak da minimum olan formlardır. Nurbs ise üniform olmayan çizgiler eğrisidir ve bu eğriler, bir strüktür modelinde geometrinin haritalamasını yaparak serbest form yapıların strüktüre referans olabilecek olası çizgi ve yüzey ilşikilerinin hesaplanmasında kullanılırlar.
Matematiğin bir model oluşturduğu bu strüktür sistemlerinde, bilgisayar ortamında oluşan simülasyon, geçmişin sıkıcı ve anlaması zor olan hesaplamalarını geride bırakıp mimar ve mühendislere ortak olarak kullanabilecekleri bir ara yüz oluşturmuştur.

          Anahtar Kelimeler: Strüktür Tasarımı, Karmaşıklık Kuramı, Optimizasyon, Geometri, Kendi kendini Organize Etme, Topoloji

A clear bridge connecting the theory of spontaneous order and the issue of beauty in and for cities has not yet been developed. After a general exploration of the concept of beauty, this article builds an alternative idea of beauty, namely, beauty as spontaneity. In particular, it argues that beauty in the urban realm greatly depends on forms and orders that can hardly be comprehensively designed but rather emerge as the result of the freedom granted to multiple urban agents to express themselves in space. In this article the works of Jacobs and Romano are analysed and explored. Starting from some of their main ideas, the paper suggests certain planning and design tactics to nurture this kind of beauty and provides some essential ethical principles.

Цель настоящей статьи состоит в реабилитации в глазах научной общественности древних представлений о мире, имеющих целочисленное выражение, и в их возвращении в понятийный аппарат современной науки. Целочисленное моделирование, кроме математического программирования, встречается в системах микроэлементов деятельности, а также в древних мифах творения и числовых моделях бытия. Разные способы структурирования 10-элементной целостности отражают уровни её системной организации в пифагорейском тетрактисе, древе сефирот иудейской каббалы, древнеиндийской саанкхье. Структура пифагорейского тетрактиса может быть обнаружена во фрактально-кластерной модели, но относительные единицы значения, составляющие её, получают традиционно десятичное или процентное выражение.

This paper aims rehabilitation of the ancient ideas about the world, which have an integer expression in the eyes of the scientific community, and their return to the conceptual apparatus of modern science. Integer modeling, apart from mathematical programming, can be found in the systems of microelements of activity, as well as in ancient myths of creation and numerical models of being. Different ways of structuring 10-element integrity reflect the levels of its system arrangement in the Pythago-rean tetractys, the Sephiroth tree of the Jewish Kabbalah, in the Old Indian Saankhya. The structure of the Pythagorean tetraktis is found in the fractal-cluster model, but the relative units of value, that make it up, have the traditional decimal or percentage expression.

The future society may be and most likely
1. A society without human labor
2. A society of free activities and free time
3. A company dreamed of by Heinz von Foerster, Henri Atlan and Ilya Prigogine
Part 1: Development issues of developed countries
1.1 They have already made and updated their industrial revolution, they are:
• A nano computer revolution that will boost the artificial intelligence foundation of automation and robotics (and aggravation of unemployment)
• A biotechnological and genetic revolution
• And to the revolution of the "service economy" where 65% of the active population produces 70% of national wealth (against 29% and 28% for industry and 6% and 2% for agriculture - France). These are the services that pay the most!
1.2 They have new groups - multinationals - and very active and dynamic social networks.
In this case, the future development for these already developed countries will focus on what? Or what is missing - the "almost" - to the development of today's society.
The perception - relatively widespread and fair - of a more technology-centric development - and its legal owners - than on humans feeds this ... but.
To which the question of "what" will bring about the future development of today's society becomes indeed relevant.

In urban communities, infrastructures that support living are indispensable. There is increased interest in alternative ways of providing such support systems, including semi-autonomous infrastructures resulting from the self-organization of local actors. In this study, we analyze the emergence and management of such infrastructures in light of the theory of complex adaptive systems, within which they are called ‘inverse infrastructures’. Empirical evidence is drawn from the case of water cooperatives in the town of Ikaalinen, Finland. Our analysis shows that, with favorable preconditions in place, inverse infrastructures may contribute significantly to local infrastructure services and so also to the functioning of society.

Software systems are becoming ever more complex, as the capabilities of the software upon which they are based increase. To develop software that is manageable, we must look for novel sources of inspiration, rather than requiring an increasingly costly level of human support. Self-organising software suggests benefits in this direction, and this chapter focuses on a particularly relevant area of inspiration, that of natural systems. Indeed many natural systems are themselves self-organising, despite being often very complicated. We consider natural systems both in the context of non-living (mathematical, physical and chemical) and living (cellular, invertebrate and vertebrate, not excluding human beings) examples. We review some of the causal mechanisms and conditions that are fundamental to self-organisation in natural systems, such as: complexity, evolution, ecological interactions, animal behaviour, as well as the complexities of human behaviour, which has given us insights into phenomena such as small-world networks, epidemics, trust and gossip. In each case, we consider the relevance to self-organising software, and we throughout provide a range of references to applications and to other chapters where particular areas will be developed in more detail. We conclude by considering two application areas which arise frequently in the context of self-organising software, in different contexts: trading in markets, and networks when considered from the perspectives of design, management and robustness.

Musik ist eine Manifestation der grundlegenden menschlichen Fähigkeit, mittels Zeichen zu denken, zu fühlen und zu handeln. Die Musiksemiotik hat das Ziel, diese Fähigkeit und ihre Manifestationen wissenschaftlich zu beschreiben und zu erklären. Teil I des Buches umreißt den Gegenstand einer Musiksemiotik, behandelt die Emergenz und Koevolution von Musik und Sprache, hebt die kognitiven Aspekte der Musik heraus und frägt nach der Bedeutung musikalischer Zeichen. Auch Sprache (Literatur) und Bilder (besonders Filme) können mit musiksemiotischen Begriffen analysiert werden. In den Kapiteln von Teil II werden Beispiele musikalischer Zeichengestaltung behandelt: von der Polyphonie, der Kunst der Fuge über die Diskurskontexte von Blues und Jazz bis zum Lied und Rap. Ein weiteres Anwendungskapitel beschäftigt sich mit politischen Liedermachern (Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan und Wolf Biermann). Teil III ist den theoretischen Aspekten der Musiksemiotik gewidmet. Es behandelt das Zeichenkonzept und dessen Erneuerung im Kontext der Musiksemiotik. Im letzten Kapitel werden die musikalischen Phänomene der Melodie, die Dynamik der Fuge und quasi-narrative Strukturen in musikalischen Werken mit Modellkonzepten der Dynamischen Systemtheorie beschrieben.
Der Autor Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wildgen lehrt und forscht seit 1981 an der Universität Bremen in der Sprachwissenschaft, Semiotik und Philosophie. Seit 2004 sind Monographien zur Evolution der Sprache, zur Kognitiven Grammatik, zu Giordano Bruno, zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und zur visuellen Semiotik erschienen.

The paper is an effort to conceptualize the combined effects of the evolution of populism and the present pandemic. Concepts from Social Psychology and Neuropsychology are used to create an explanatory framework for the development of internet based ideologies, which facilitate the spontaneous formation of self-organizing movements, which in turn lead to acts of stochastic terrorism.

Dendritic structures are one of the most frequent patterns in nature, that appear in crystalline systems (such as metals), advanced ceramics and neural systems of the living organisms. Embedded in the core of many industrially important processes such as casting, there is a strong relationship between the material properties and the solidified dendritic microstructures.

In our proposed study microstructural simulations were performed using MICRESS® code, which implements a multi-phase-field approach and essentially provides a mathematical solution to the coupled partial differential equations of phase-field and diffusion. In the context of the study, MICRESS® was used to simulate the morphological transitions and the solute segregations during directional solidification under a wide spectrum of temperature gradients, solidification rates and chemical compositions. The proposed model is integrated with an in-situ experimental study of solidification in a high-temperature laser-scanning confocal microscope. Such in-situ studies are able to provide an experimental mean to measure some of the crucial physical properties of the studied alloys, resulting in more refined microstructural simulations of such phenomena. For instance we demonstrated a real-time method for the calculation of Gibbs-Thomson coefficient and the solid-liquid interfacial energy of the studied alloys by analysing the shape of the grain-boundary grooves at the solid-liquid interface. The interface mobility parameter was calibrated so to achieve a realistic interface velocity aligned with the regime experimentally observed in real-time in the confocal microscopy.

Borodkin, Leonid. CHALLENGES OF INSTABILITY: THE CONCEPTS OF SYNERGETICS  IN STUDYING THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIA The article discusses the big challenges of Russia’s historical development associated with the unstable nature of the social and political processes of the 20th century, the unpredictability of radical changes that capture different countries, and the alternatives of their development. An adequate approach to studying such processes, analyzing mechanisms of their functioning became possible on the basis of the multidisciplinary concept of synergetics related to the doctrine of self-organization, the methods of nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory. An important issue this paper addresses is relationship between regularity and randomness in the development of an unstable social process, in particular, the role of the individual in this process. This issue acquires special significance in researching transition epochs and radical transformations of society, which require an adequate response to the big challenges posed by the risk of a system falling into the trajectory of turbulent development. Connected with this question are new approaches to exploring alternatives of social development that arise at the points of bifurcation, considered in the article on the example of the development of the revolutionary situation in 1917 Russia. It is shown that the challenges of instability which impede sustainable development that have emerged at different periods of Russia’s history and that are possible in its foreseeable future can be analyzed and modeled using synergetic concepts. The methodological tools of historical research are expanding and include now methods of studying unstable historical processes, dynamics of revolutionary changes and protest movements.

В статье рассмотрены большие вызовы исторического развития России, связанные с неустойчивым характером социально-политических процессов ХХ в., непредсказуемость радикальных перемен, захватывающих различные страны, альтернативность их развития. Адекватный подход к изучению таких процессов, к анализу механизмов их функционирования стал возможен на основе мультидисциплинарной концепции синергетики, связанной с учением о самоорганизации, с методами нелинейной динамики и теории хаоса. Обсуждается в работе и соотношение закономерности и случайности в развитии неустойчивого процесса, в частности роль личности в этом процессе. Этот вопрос приобретает особое значение при изучении переходных эпох, радикальных трансформаций общества, требующих адекватного ответа на большие вызовы, порождаемые риском схода системы на траекторию турбулентного развития. С этим вопросом связаны и новые подходы к изучению альтернатив общественного развития, возникающих в точках бифуркации, рассмотренные в статье на примере развития революционной ситуации в России 1917 г. Показано, что вызовы нестабильности, препятствующие устойчивому развитию, возникавшие в разные периоды истории России и возможные в ее обозримом будущем, могут подвергаться анализу и моделироваться с помощью концепций синергетики. Методологический инструментарий исторической науки расширяется, включая теперь методы изучения неустойчивых исторических процессов, динамики революционных изменений и протестных движений.

This article juxtaposes the notion of wuwei in Daoism and philosophical principles of self-organization in systems theory to re-imagine classroom dynamics in which pedagogical relationships, students’ interactions with texts, and peer interplay come together to enable an open system of education, learning, and growth. Wuwei is a way of governing and leadership, while self-organization is the emergence of new structures at the global level as a result of local interactions. The combination of topdown and bottom-up processes contributes to create a dynamic classroom. The contemporary Neo-Daoists’ concerns with creating conditions for wuwei to happen can be addressed by principles of self-organization, while wuwei provides a philosophical underpinning that is informative to systems theories. This article first introduces the Daoist notion of wuwei, then articulate important principles of self-organization theory, and further juxtapose the two in both resonance and dissonance in four aspects: the role of change, the role of diversity, the role of the individual person, and the role of the teacher’s wuwei leadership in the selforganizing classroom. In the last section, the article discusses how to shift classroom dynamics toward emergent, relational, and creative pathways, including creating conditions for self-organization and wuwei to happen in the classroom.

Each living creature exists as a unit, as self. Understanding the self, then should be a major goal of scientific research. This volume takes stock of current understanding of the self and its relation to the brain, and considers future directions for scientific research in a multidisciplinary context.

How is it possible to introduce a notion of Reality as Totality that is conso- nant with the continuous development of contemporary science? To answer this question, we introduce in this chapter the notion of Reality-Totality. We argue in favor of the view that Reality as a Totality may be conceived as active and living Knowledge: the self-exposing Idea that self-exposes itself to us by a self- organizing process of which our knowledge process itself is part. The view we argue for is of a metaphysical nature, and it elaborates on the methodological character of the study of the Self-Organization. We show that this philosophi- cal view emerges from some general reflections on the constitution of scientific knowledge, providing elements that make possible the structuring and coordina- tion of various scientific contents and methods.
Our exposition begins with a discussion of the epistemological analysis of Gilles-Gaston Granger (1920–2016), and the genetic epistemology and psychol- ogy of Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and his coworkers. We then proceed to an anal- ysis that leads us to the notion of Reality-Totality and its properties. At the conclusion of the chapter, it will be seen that the view presented here is a new form of absolute speculative idealism, close to the philosophical view of Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831).

The future of human computation (HC) benefits from examining tasks that agents already perform and designing environments to give those tasks computational significance. We call this natural human computation (NHC). We consider the possible future of NHC through the lens of Swarm!, an application under development for Google Glass. Swarm! motivates users to compute the solutions to a class of economic optimization problems by engaging the attention dynamics of crowds. We argue that anticipating and managing economies of attention provides one of the most tantalizing future applications for NHC.

Το παρόν συνθέτει ένα απολογιστικό κείμενο της εμπειρίας μας από τις αυτο-οργανωμένες συλλογικότητες αθλητισμού. Ένα κείμενο που επιθυμεί να πυροδοτήσει τον αναστοχασμό σε αυτές τις συλλογικότητες. Όχι με όρους εσωστρέφειας, αλλά με όρους αναγνώρισης της δυνατότητάς μας να αλλάξουμε τον κόσμο, να δημιουργήσουμε νέους κόσμους… ένα κείμενο το οποίο προσβλέπει στην κατανόηση της δύναμής μας. Ένα κείμενο το οποίο επιθυμεί να μας θυμίσει ότι η μόνη μας πατρίδα είναι τα παιδικά μας όνειρα.
Δεν είναι, συνεπώς, ένα ακαδημαϊκό κείμενο, ούτε προσπαθεί να καλύψει τα στάνταρ της ακαδημίας. Ελπίζει μονάχα να ανταποκριθεί στις ανησυχίες, τις αγωνίες, τις επιθυμίες και τις ανάγκες μας.

‘‘Complex’’ is a special attribute we can give to many kinds of systems. Although it is used often as a synonym of ‘‘difficult,’’ it has a specific epistemological meaning, which is going to be shared by the incoming science of complexity. ‘‘Difficult’’ is an object which, by means of an adequate computational power, can be deterministically or stochastically predictable. On the
contrary ‘‘complex’’ is an object which can not be predictable because of logical impossibility or because its predictability would require a computational power far beyond any physical feasibility, now and forever. For complexity refers to some observing system, it is always subjective, and thus it is defined as observed irreducible complexity. Human systems are affected by several sources of complexity, belonging to three classes, in order of descending restrictivity. Systems belonging to the first class are not predictable at all, those belonging to the second class are predictable only through an infinite computational capacity, and those belonging to the third class are predictable only through a trans-computational capacity. The first class has two sources of complexity: logical complexity, directly deriving from self-reference and Goedel’s incompleteness theorems, and relational complexity,
resulting in a sort of indeterminacy principle occurring in social systems. The second class has three sources of complexity: gnosiological complexity, which consists of the variety of possible perceptions; semiotic complexity, which represents the infinite possible interpretations of signs and facts; and chaotic complexity, which characterizes phenomena of nonlinear dynamic systems. The third class coincides with computational complexity, which basically coincides with the mathematical concept of intractability. Artificial, natural, biological and human systems are characterized by the influence of different sources of complexity, and the latter appear to be the most complex.

In this paper, we propose a Document Self Organizer (DoSO), an extension of the classic Self Organizing Map (SOM) model, in order to deal more efficiently with a document clustering task. Starting from a document representation model, based on important " concepts " exploiting Wikipedia knowledge, that we have previously developed in order to overcome some of the shortcomings of the Bag-of-Words (BOW) model, we demonstrate how SOM's performance can be boosted by using the most important concepts of the document collection to explicitly initialize the neurons. We also show how a hierarchical approach can be utilized in the SOM model and how this can lead to a more comprehensive final clustering result with hierarchical descriptive labels attached to neurons and clusters. Experiments show that the proposed model (DoSO) yields promising results both in terms of extrinsic and SOM evaluation measures.

Le recours contemporain à la notion de "complexité" renvoie fréquemment à des démarches ayant tendance à unifier sa définition. En langue anglaise, sa réduction à une forme singulière (complexity theory ou complexity science) s'avère ainsi susceptible de masquer la variété des théories permettant de rendre compte des implications inhérentes au recours à cette notion. Cet article, en prenant en considération à la fois les traditions de recherche latines et anglosaxonnes, associées à la notion de complexité, suggère une approche plus nuancée, évitant la simplification de cette notion à certaines des conceptions dominantes qui y sont associées. Partant d'une approche étymologique, cet article propose d'envisager de façon chronologique l'émergence de trois générations de théories de la complexité; ce faisant, certains de leurs enracinements épistémologiques et socio-culturels sont introduits. D'un point de vue épistémologique, la réflexion proposée met en évidence certaines des interprétations hétérogènes sous-jacentes à la définition de ce qui est perçu comme complexe. Suivant une perspective anthropologique, ce texte évoque également la portée à la fois émancipatrice et asservissante susceptible d'être associée à l'idée de complexité. Sur la base des ambiguitiés mises en évidence, cet article suggère finalement de concevoir les contributions renvoyant aux théories contemporaines de la complexité, au même titre que la remise en question de leur légitimité épistémologique et éthique, à partir des boucles et des dynamiques dont elles sont constitutives. Ce faisant, les chercheurs et les praticiens en Sciences de l'éducation devraient considérer leurs pratiques en tant que processus
d'apprentissage dont la complexité renvoie autant aux transformations qu'ils étudient ou provoquent, qu'aux transformations inhérentes aux systèmes de représentations
auxquels ils ont recours pour les conceptualiser.

This paper draws on Antonio Gramsci, and Marxist social movement studies more generally, to understand some of the complexities and peculiarities involved in theorising movements in the Republic of Ireland. Gramsci’s perspective as a Southern migrant to the Italian north enables him to read Italy’s movement landscape in terms of core-periphery relationships and migration, an approach which can also fruitfully be used to understand the particularities of Irish social movements.

In historical terms, the Irish analogy to the Sardinia-Turin relationship which Gramsci theorised is one in which the core is not Dublin but Birmingham or Boston, meaning that it becomes important to consider the organising activity of the Irish abroad (both in terms of ethnic closure, right-wing Catholicism and in some contexts racism but also in terms of those who became active outside these community structures, often on the left and in the labour movement) and the impact on Irish movements of the Irish diaspora. Furthermore, in the period of ethnic closure from the later 19th century until the 1990s Irish community structure has been such that “blow-ins” (outsiders), whether from elsewhere in Ireland or from Northern societies (in what was until recently a semi-peripheral context) played a disproportionate role in most social movements, NGOs and community organising. In some contexts this remains true today.

The analysis of immigrant self-organising in Ireland starts from noting that the bulk of immigration has taken place within the last two decades, with significant choices being made for many at the onset of the economic crisis. As immigration does not follow previous colonial relationships, migrant populations are extremely heterogenous and for most individual ethnicities small in absolute terms. Hence much effort is still directed towards building informal support networks, community centres, Saturday language schools, religious venues etc., while political orientations are often shaped strongly by those acquired prior to migration and long-distance nationalisms are significant in many cases.  Similarly, there is still a largely Irish-dominated NGO sector geared to providing services for migrants in line with state and EU funding policies. Given this, the context of Ireland’s recent history of social partnership and a broader political culture of clientelism, migrant movements have to decide their political orientation at an early stage: whether to tailor their demands to what mainstream political allies present as acceptable and attainable goals in a context of widespread racism, or to test the distinctly colder waters of autonomous self-organising on their own terms.

We study self-organization of collective motion as a thermodynamic phenomenon in the context of the first law of thermodynamics. It is expected that the coherent ordered motion typically self-organises in the presence of changes in the (generalized) internal energy and of (generalized) work done on, or extracted from, the system. We aim to explicitly quantify changes in these two quantities in a system of simulated self-propelled particles and contrast them with changes in the system's configuration entropy. In doing so, we adapt a thermodynamic formulation of the curvatures of the internal energy and the work, with respect to two parameters that control the particles' alignment. This allows us to systematically investigate the behavior of the system by varying the two control parameters to drive the system across a kinetic phase transition. Our results identify critical regimes and show that during the phase transition, where the configuration entropy of the system decreases, the rates of change of the work and of the internal energy also decrease, while their curvatures diverge. Importantly, the reduction of entropy achieved through expenditure of work is shown to peak at criticality. We relate this both to a thermodynamic efficiency and the significance of the increased order with respect to a computational path. Additionally, this study provides an information-geometric interpretation of the curvature of the internal energy as the difference between two curvatures: the curvature of the free entropy, captured by the Fisher information, and the curvature of the configuration entropy.

In the context of interactive governance, self-organisation represents the most extreme manifestation of active involvement. It means that, rather than participating in government initiatives, citizens take the initiative themselves and government may or may not be involved. Long restricted to the field of civil society and voluntary sector research, self-organisation is increasingly becoming a topic on the agenda of public administration, in research and practice (Brandsen and Helderman, 2012; Meerkerk et al., 2013; Nederhand et.al, 2015). In this chapter, I will present key issues in helping to understand this phenomenon. Compared to more traditional types of citizen participation discussed in this book, we know far less about how it works and about how governments can adopt a constructive role. Nor is it self-evident what government should hope to achieve. More so than other types of interactive governance, self-organisation raises moral questions over the role of public authorities and the legitimacy of their interventions.

To start with, I will argue that the dream of self-organising citizens is of a longer-term trend, despite its current appearance of fashionable frill. I will go on to discuss how different theories can help us explain why and how citizens organise themselves. Next, I will examine the moral and practical dilemmas faced by governments in dealing with self-organisation. Finally, I will reflect briefly on the future potential for collaboration between government and self-organising citizens.

It can easily be shown that the prior probability of the spontaneous formation of a living system is near zero. The same is true even for the prior probability of the spontaneous formation of a single macromolecule carrying biological information or function.

In view of such low probabilities of nucleation, three explanations of the origin of life have been put forward, each laying a different emphasis upon the respective roles of chance and law in evolution:

(1) the hypothesis of singular chance.
(2) the hypothesis of the vitalistic forces, and
(3) the molecular Darwinian approach.

An analysis based on algorithmic information theory shows that for fundamental reasons the chance hypothesis eannot be proven and that for fundamental reasons the vitalistic hypothesis cannot be disproven. Only the Darwinian approach yields of epistemological standards. The problem-solving capacity of the Darwinian approach is demonstrated with a game-theoretical model.

For Donna Haraway, a tentacular life is relational and sticky, a moving-creating-living with that is at heart sympoietic and entangled. Wilding, as a speculative pragmatic and ten-tacular practice, involves thinking about the world in ecological terms-that is, neither a world of objects or one of fixed and separated subjects with a distanced perspective of the world. Instead, wilding involves a tactic of embracing an entangled and multi-storied approach to thinking. In this article the question of the possibility of ecological rather than individualized consciousness is speculated upon through the tentacular. Drawing on William James' impersonal conception of consciousness and contemporary biology's insights into the relationality of life and thinking, this paper asks: what would a sympoietic concept of consciousness mean? How would this shift the valuing of intelligences towards activism and allow us to learn from those, human and nonhuman, traditionally denied intellectual value?

One can explore the biological roots of hunger but can one explore the biological root of bread. Like food, art is what is produced to satisfy a biological need. What is this biological need?
May be just to survive we need food, in similar manner there may be  something of similar necessity/ urgency that has now resulted in to 'art'. Food has also undergone changes in a manner that is similar to art (balanced diet and all that kind of ideas!). The present conception of art is a modern construct. Can something that has been constructed mentally have biological roots? When one sees food it is natural to salivate especially if one is hungry. This indeed is a biological response But by studying this act of salivation can one understand the biological roots of hunger!

We have histories of the term ‘invisible hand’, but less on the idea, which goes back to a) ancient Taoism (the Tao does nothing, yet it is the Way by which all things are done); b) the Hippocratic philosophy, that physicians should remove the impediment and then let nature takes its course (think of Smith’s ‘unknown principle of animal life’, which ‘frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution’ (Wealth of Nations 343); c) common law, a product of human action but not of human design; John Herschel’s 19th-century concept of ‘consilience’ (‘when verifications [of a theory] spring up… spontaneously…from quarters where they might be least expected…evidence of this kind is irresistible’); and the late-20th-century science of ‘self-organization’.

My theme is ‘life-writing’, understood as the shaping of one's life through the contemplation of values, although this activity is mostly unreflective. To become an art so that one's life can be shaped in greater accord with clearly held values, this process must become reflective. These values have an inescapably ethical dimension, because as we necessarily poetize our surrounding world, we contribute to our personal and communal ethos the character that arises from the culturally shaping power of guiding ideals. Even the immoralist cultivates life within an ethos where obscure feelings connect with some thing or other, whereby certain aims will then appear more valuable than others.

To understand how we cannot help but shape our lives according to dimly or clearly intuited values, I compare Coleridge’s primary imagination, the ‘shaping spirit’ ‘necessary for all human perception’ with Kant’s ‘blind though indispensible function of the soul, without which we would have no cognition at all, yet of which we are scarcely ever conscious’. With Coleridge, we find in imagination an impulse to connect profound but obscure presentiments and ideas with our surroundings. This impulse propels great art and everyday aesthetics alike. Whether we pursue merely what attracts us, or seek value beyond this, all lives are freely shaped, without excuses, as the existentialists say, but not always in the most pellucid consciousness. Our choices inevitably engage us in the poetic art of life-writing. Cast in medias res, we necessarily improvise. But this is no argument against lives being moral-aesthetic works, spontaneous compositions in value.

Literature on the modeling and simulation of complex adaptive systems (cas) has primarily advanced vertically in different scientific domains with scientists developing a variety of domain-specific approaches and applications. However, while cas researchers are inherently interested in an interdisciplinary comparison of models, to the best of our knowledge, there is currently no single unified framework for facilitating the development, comparison, communication and validation of models across different scientific domains. In this thesis, we propose first steps towards such a unified framework using a combination of agent-based and complex network-based modeling approaches and guidelines formulated in the form of a set of four levels of usage, which allow multidisciplinary researchers to adopt a suitable framework level on the basis of available data types, their research study objectives and expected outcomes, thus allowing them to better plan and conduct their respective research case studies. Firstly, the complex network modeling level of the proposed framework entails the development of appropriate complex network models for the case where interaction data of cas components is available, with the aim of detecting emergent patterns in the cas under study. The exploratory agent-based modeling level of the proposed framework allows for the development of proof-of-concept models for the cas system, primarily for purposes of exploring feasibility of further research. Descriptive agent-based modeling level of the proposed framework allows for the use of a formal step-by-step approach for developing agent-based models coupled with a quantitative complex network and pseudocode-based specification of the model, which will, in turn, facilitate interdisciplinary cas model comparison and knowledge transfer. Finally, the validated agent-based modeling level of the proposed framework is concerned with the building of in-simulation verification and validation of agent-based models using a proposed Virtual Overlay Multiagent System approach for use in a systematic team-oriented approach to developing models. The proposed framework is evaluated and validated using seven detailed case study examples selected from various scientific domains including ecology, social sciences and a range of complex adaptive communication networks. The successful case studies demonstrate the potential of the framework in appealing to multidisciplinary researchers as a methodological approach to the modeling and simulation of cas by facilitating effective communication and knowledge transfer across scientific disciplines without the requirement of extensive learning curves.

Μια διαφορετική λογική στοιχειώνει τα τοπικά πρωταθλήματα αθλητισμού του ελλα-δικού χώρου, η λογική της αυτο-οργάνωσης. Τα τελευταία χρόνια συμμετέχουν, στα ερασιτεχνικά πρωταθλήματα, συλλογικότητες οι οποίες πέρα από την αθλητική τους ενασχόληση, εκφράζονται ενεργά και στο πολιτικό γίγνεσθαι. Οι  δεκαεννέα αυτο-οργανωμένες συλλογικότητες, δικτυωμένες μεταξύ τους, αποτυπώνουν μια κραυγή ενάντια στη κυρίαρχη οπτική οργάνωσης του αθλητισμού. Ποιοί είναι οι σκοποί τους; Οι τρόποι έκφρασής τους;
Στην παρούσα εργασία θα διαχωρίσουμε τις αυτο-οργανωμένες συλλογικότη-τες αθλητισμού από την έννοια των «fan-owned club», καθώς οι τελευταίες εγγράφο-νται εντός της κοινωνικής επιχειρηματικότητας, υποστηρίζοντας ότι οι αυτο-οργανωμένες συλλογικότητες συνιστούν ρωγμές στο μοντέρνο ποδόσφαιρο, οι οποίες διέπονται από, τουλάχιστον, δύο χαρακτηριστικά: α) Επαναφέρουν το βίωμα της μπάλας σα γιορτή, ως μια καρναβαλική κατάσταση, μέσα από την οποία επαν-οικειοποιούνται τη χαρά.  β) Αυτή η καρναβαλική κατάσταση συνεπικουρεί τη δημι-ουργία εναλλακτικών και οριζόντιων κοινωνικών σχέσεων, οι οποίες έρχονται κατα-στατικά σε σύγκρουση και σύγκριση με τις θεσμοθετημένες κοινωνικές σχέσεις.
Κλείνοντας, οι αυτο-οργανωμένες ομάδες προσφέρουν ένα αξιοσημείωτο πε-δίο για μελέτη καθώς η πολιτική τους στόχευση εκφράζεται μέσω του -υποτιμημένου- πεδίου του αθλητισμού. Η πραγμάτωση μιας οριζόντιας πολιτικής διαδικασίας εντός ενός φιλελευθεροποιημένου χώρου, ο οποίος εμβολίζεται από το δόγμα του «no polit-ica», βαραίνει τη σημασία αυτής της δράσης και της μελέτης της.

The two most powerful words in the English language, and for that matter in any language, are “Yes” and “No.”  They literally create different realities.  Saying, “Yes,” to a person, event, circumstance, or experience literally points us, and our consciousness, in one direction, and saying “No” to that same person, event, circumstance, or experience literally points us, and our consciousness, in another direction.  Therein lies the power of “Yes” and “No.”  The point of our power, therefore, is in the present—at the point of saying “Yes” and “No”.  Here I want to place emphasis on making that point of power more conscious.

Portals: Windows, doors, black holes, white holes and worm holes serve as nodes for transport between different systems of  organization in the works and writings of Marcel Duchamp, and in Thomas Pynchon's novels _Gravity's Rainbow_ and _Vineland_.  These portals enable pivoting between different forms of cognition, in the realm of the social and political with respect to subject positions, and in the realm of the individual with respect to subject formation.  Drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and on the cognitive science of Francisco Varela and Edwin Hutchins, a connection is made between an avant-garde modernist, and a post-modern novelist, in their attention to a war between top-down and bottom-up processes in society and self.  This investigation becomes a way to rethink the terms modernism and postmodernism.