Key Vocabulary: Boundaries

           Boundaries play a seldom understood role in what is often referred to as  "self-organization".   Note that Prigogine himself (who coined the current usage of the term) regretted that the meme of self-organization took hold when he meant "self-contained within an established boundary."  Self-organization can ONLY occur inside a boundary -- for it is the boundary which acts as the constraint to define the "self" which is organizing.   Thus in the drawing below, the system is the "self" which would be the subject of any self-organization.

           Boundaries can act as both limiting constraints and as enabling constraints.

           Boundaries can also serve as delimiters regarding category membership -- with all which that may imply in a Science I world.