Circular Causality and Function in Self-Organized Systems with Solid-Fluid Interactions

Self-organization can be characterized as the emergence of mutual constraint among elements of a system with many flexible degrees of freedom. This mutual constraint emerges from the nonlinear interactivity between the constituents and the driving nonequilibrium boundary conditions. We review here interesting self-organized dynamics in systems where this interactivity among solid elements is mediated by an embedding fluid. In separate electrical and chemical nonequilibrium systems, we observe self-organization of solid elements exhibiting mutual constraint due to reciprocal interactions between the solids and the embedding fluid. This mutual constraint supports a variety of interesting dynamics for the emergent structures, including several behaviors with biological analogues. The reciprocal solid-fluid interactions mirror aspects of biological behavior construed as organism-environment reciprocities. We lay foundations for a mapping between these physical and psychological phenomena to enrich the application of dissipative self-organization theory to biology.