Auto-organização, também chamada de ordem espontânea nas ciências sociais, é um processo em que alguma forma de ordem geral surge de interações locais entre partes de um sistema inicialmente desordenado. O processo pode ser espontâneo quando há energia suficiente disponível, não necessitando de controle por nenhum agente externo. Muitas vezes é desencadeada por flutuações aparentemente aleatórias, amplificadas por feedback positivo. A organização resultante é totalmente descentralizada, distribuída por todos os componentes do sistema. Como tal, a organização é tipicamente robusta e capaz de sobreviver ou autorreparar perturbações substanciais.A teoria do caos discute a auto-organização em termos de ilhas de previsibilidade em um mar de imprevisibilidade caótica.
Stafford Beer, Self-organization as autonomy: Brain of the Firm 2nd edition Wiley 1981 and Beyond Dispute Wiley 1994.
Adrian Bejan (2000), Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 324 pp.
Mark Buchanan (2002), Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks W. W. Norton & Company.
Scott Camazine, Jean-Louis Deneubourg, Nigel R. Franks, James Sneyd, Guy Theraulaz, & Eric Bonabeau (2001) Self-Organization in Biological Systems, Princeton Univ Press.
Hermann Haken (1983) Synergetics: An Introduction. Nonequilibrium Phase Transition and Self-Organization in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, Third Revised and Enlarged Edition, Springer-Verlag.
Arthur Iberall (2016), Homeokinetics: The Basics, Strong Voices Publishing, Medfield, Massachusetts.
Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen (1998), Self-Organized Criticality: Emergent Complex Behaviour in Physical and Biological Systems, Cambridge Lecture Notes in Physics 10, Cambridge University Press.
E.V. Krishnamurthy (2009)", Multiset of Agents in a Network for Simulation of Complex Systems", in "Recent advances in Nonlinear Dynamics and synchronization, (NDS-1) – Theory and applications, Springer Verlag, New York,2009. Eds. K.Kyamakya, et al.
Paul Krugman (1996), The Self-Organizing Economy, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Elizabeth McMillan (2004) "Complexity, Organizations and Change".
Marshall, A (2002) The Unity of Nature, Imperial College Press: London (esp. chapter 5)
Müller, J.-A., Lemke, F. (2000), Self-Organizing Data Mining.
Gregoire Nicolis and Ilya Prigogine (1977) Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems, Wiley.
Heinz Pagels (1988), The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity, Simon & Schuster.
Gordon Pask (1961), The cybernetics of evolutionary processes and of self organizing systems, 3rd. International Congress on Cybernetics, Namur, Association Internationale de Cybernetique.
Christian Prehofer ea. (2005), "Self-Organization in Communication Networks: Principles and Design Paradigms", in: IEEE Communications Magazine, July 2005.
Mitchell Resnick (1994), Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds, Complex Adaptive Systems series, MIT Press.}}ISBN?}}
Tom De Wolf, Tom Holvoet (2005), Emergence Versus Self-Organisation: Different Concepts but Promising When Combined, In Engineering Self Organising Systems: Methodologies and Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 3464, pp. 1–15.
K. Yee (2003), "Ownership and Trade from Evolutionary Games", International Review of Law and Economics, 23.2, 183–197.
Louise B. Young (2002), The Unfinished Universe[Falta ISBN]