Dear colleagues Together with Damian Zanette, we are editing a an Entropy special issue around a question, that is of particular interest to the neurosciences: 'What is self-organizaton?' Deadline: 15 October 2021 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/special_issues/self_organzation ------ info ------ Many of us have used the notion of `self-organization' in our studies. What is it precisely, though? A constituent element could be, e.g., the emergence of non-trivial properties from comparatively simple rules. What would simple, non-trivial or complex emergence mean in this context? In this Special Issue, we invite viewpoints, perspectives, and applied considerations on questions regarding the notions of self-organization and complexity. Examples include: Routes In how many different ways can self-organization manifest itself? Would it be meaningful, or even possible, to attempt a classification? Detection Can we detect it automatically, either the process or the outcome? Or do we need a human observer to classify a system as `self-organizing'? This issue may be related to the construction of quantifiers, e.g., in terms of functions on phase space, such as entropy measures. Complexity Is a system self-organizing only when the resulting dynamical state is `complex'? What does `complex' mean exactly? Are there many types of complexity, or just a single one? E.g., it has never been settled whether complexity should be intensive or extensive, if any. Domains Where do we find self-organizing processes? Are the properties of self-organizing systems domain-specific or universal? In which class of systems does self-organization show up most clearly? We are looking forward to your contribution! Claudius Gros %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ### ### Prof. Dr. Claudius Gros ### http://itp.uni-frankfurt.de/~gros ### ### Complex and Adaptive Dynamical Systems, A Primer ### A graduate-level textbook, Springer (2008/10/13/15) ### ### Life for barren exoplanets: The Genesis project ### https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-016-2911-0 ###