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Self-organization describes how global patterns of organization within a system can emerge out of the local interactions between the components without global centralized coordination. The theory of self-organization seeks a description of how order emerges in a system through the interaction between the elementary parts in a bottom-up fashion.

The process of self-organization can be seen to work through nonlinear interactions between elements that are amplified by positive feedback loops to create attractors that close in on themselves resulting in a new pattern of organization emerging on the macro-level. Examples of self-organizing processes include the swarming of bees, chemical processes of crystallization, the formation of black markets or the creation of cultures or new languages.