Related papers: Field-control, phase-transitions, and life's emerg…
Although it has been notoriously difficult to pin down precisely what it is that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that its informational aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property. The unique…
Scale-free outbursts of activity are commonly observed in physical, geological, and biological systems. The idea of self-organized criticality (SOC), introduced back in 1987 by Bak, Tang and Wiesenfeld suggests that, under certain…
Self-organized criticality (SOC) refers to the ability of complex systems to evolve towards a 2nd-order phase transition at which interactions between system components lead to scale-invariant events beneficial for system performance. For…
The original sandpile model of Bak, Tang and Wiesenfeld from 1987 has inspired lots of consequent work and further ideas of how to describe the birth of scale-invariant statistics in various systems and in particular models. In this article…
We propose a dynamical model in which a network structure evolves in a self-organized critical (SOC) manner and explain a possible origin of the emergence of fractal and small-world networks. Our model combines a network growth and its…
Unlike many physical nonequilibrium systems, in biological systems, the coupling to external energy sources is not a fixed parameter but adaptively controlled by the system itself. We do not have theoretical frameworks that allow for such…
A number of features of living systems: reversible interactions and weak bonds underlying motor-dynamics; gel-sol transitions; cellular connected fractal organization; asymmetry in interactions and organization; quantum coherent phenomena;…
Mounting evidence indicates that our planet might experience runaway effects associated to rising temperatures and ecosystem overexploitation, leading to catastrophic shifts on short time scales. Remediation scenarios capable of…
The basic laws of physics are simple, so why is the world complex? The theory of self-organized criticality posits that complex behavior in nature emerges from the dynamics of extended, dissipative systems that evolve through a sequence of…
Self-organized bistability (SOB) is the counterpart of 'self-organized criticality' (SOC), for systems tuning themselves to the edge of bistability of a discontinuous phase transition, rather than to the critical point of a continuous one.…
Living systems self-organize in ways that conventional physical frameworks-based on forces, energies, and continuous fields-cannot fully capture. Processes like gene regulation and cellular decision-making involve rule-based logic and…
Biological activities are often seen entrained onto the day-night and other celestial mechanical cycles (e.g., seasonal and lunar), but studies on the origin of life have largely not accounted for such periodic external environmental…
A hallmark of living systems is the ability to employ a common set of versatile building blocks that can self-organize into a multitude of different structures, in a way that can be controlled with minimal cost. This capability can only be…
In self-organized criticality (SOC) models, as well as in standard phase transitions, criticality is only present for vanishing external fields $h \to 0$. Considering that this is rarely the case for natural systems, such a restriction…
In this chapter of the e-book "Self-Organized Criticality Systems" we summarize some theoretical approaches to self-organized criticality (SOC) phenomena that involve percolation as an essential key ingredient. Scaling arguments, random…
We suggest that ensembles of self-replicating entities such as biological systems naturally evolve into a self-organized critical state in which fluctuations, as well as waiting-times between phase transitions are distributed according to a…
Life can be viewed as a localized chemical system that sits on, or in the basin of attraction of, a metastable dynamical attractor state that remains out of equilibrium with the environment. Such a view of life allows that new living states…
Life is commonly described as a self-organized, far-from-equilibrium process that maintains internal order by consuming free energy and exporting entropy. This thermodynamic view underlies diverse theoretical frameworks -- from autopoiesis…
The dynamic instability of the living systems and the "superposition" of different forms of randomness are viewed as a component of the contingently increasing organization of life along evolution. We briefly survey how classical and…
Self-organized criticality elucidates the conditions under which physical and biological systems tune themselves to the edge of a second-order phase transition, with scale invariance. Motivated by the empirical observation of bimodal…