ABSTRACT
Developmentalists are beginning to conceptualize human development as a process of self-organization. This trend has been fueled by growing interest in dynamical systems theory in the sciences at large, and by new models of complexity and adaptation in biological and evolutionary studies. Self-organization means the emergence and consolidation of novel forms that assemble themselves out of recursive interactions among simpler elements. The nature of such forms is qualitatively distinct from that of their precursors—not only greater than the sum of their parts, but new, different, and unspecified by those parts. The concept of self-organization brings change and novelty back to the foreground of developmental modeling, recapturing intuitions that have motivated developmentalists for years.
