The Self-Organizing Social Mind (A Bradford Book) by John Bolender

Author:John Bolender
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-04-14T21:52:00+00:00

Figure 4.1

Patterns formed by BZ reactions. Images used with permission of Antony Hall (www .owlproject.com).

Turing suggested that reactions among chemicals, which then diffuse through the system (a reaction-diffusion system), could explain the emergence of certain patterns, such as the zebra's stripes (1952). Such a class of chemical reactions was eventually found by Belousov and Zhabotinskii (references in DeSimone, Beil, and Scriven 1973), working independently of each other, which resulted in what are now known as BelousovZhabotinskii (BZ) reactions. Today, this is understood in terms of spontaneous symmetry breaking (Stewart and Golubitsky 1992), in other words a tiny perturbation in an unstable system iterates to produce a general decrease in the symmetry of the system. In a BZ reaction, a homogeneous (i.e., highly symmetrical) concentration of chemicals spontaneously forms patterns once it becomes unstable enough for spontaneous symmetry breaking to occur. The patterns appearing in a BZ reaction (figure 4.1) are one example of self-organization (self-assembly), the emergence of complexity out of homogeneity via "cascades of symmetry breaking bifurcations" (Goodwin 2001, 157; see also Kauffman 1993, 637). Self-organization may also be understood as a system acquiring its structure, including structures of activity, without outside interference.

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