Emergence Versus Self-Organisation: Diﬀerent Concepts but Promising When Combined

Tom De Wolf and Tom Holvoet

Department of Computer Science, Kuleuven, Celestijnenlaan 200A, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

{

Tom.DeWolf, Tom.Holvoet

}

@cs.kuleuven.ac.be

Abstract.

A clear terminology is essential in every research discipline. In the context of ESOA, a lot of confusion exists about the meaning of the terms emergence and self-organisation. One of the sources of the confusion comes from the fact that a combination of both phenomena often occurs in dynamical systems. In this paper a historic overview of the use of each concept as well as a working deﬁnition, that is compatible with the historic and current meaning of the concepts, is given. Each deﬁnition is explained by supporting it with important characteristics found in the literature. We show that emergence and self-organisation each emphasise diﬀerent properties of a system. Both phenomena can exist in isolation. The paper also outlines some examples of such systems and considers the combination of emergence and self-organisation as a promising approach in complex multi-agent systems.

1 In tr od uc ti on

In the context of engineering self-organising applications there are two very im- portant concepts to consider: emergence and self-organisation. In many multi- agent systems and complex adaptive systems in general, a combination of the two concepts is often used. As a consequence, much literature describes emergence and self-organisation incorrectly as synonyms and this results in misconception about their meaning. When engineering such applications, using a clear ter- minology is very important. To clarify the distinction between emergence and self-organisation, this paper’s goal is to propose a working deﬁnition of both conce pts. This deﬁnition is supporte d by charact erist ics that most literature describes as essential for emergence or self-organisation. Emergence and self-organisation each emphasise very diﬀerent characteristics of a system’s behaviour. Both phenomena can exist in isolation and they can co-exist in a dynamical system. The ﬁrst two sections of this paper describe each phenomenon separately by giving a historic overview of the use of each concept, proposing a working deﬁnition, and outlining their important characteristics to explain and support the deﬁnition given. The third section relates emergence and self-organisation to each other by discussing their similarities and diﬀerences.

S. Brueckner et al. (Eds.): ESOA 2004, LNCS 3464, pp. 1– 15, 2005. c

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