A peer-reviewed conceptual analysis published in Synthese argues that the thermodynamic account used to distinguish self-assembly from self-organization is the wrong framework for the job. Author Sebastian Sander Oest contends that the literature on these two concepts has long been marked by inconsistent and conflating usage, and that the thermodynamic account in particular fails to handle the frequent interplay between self-assembly and self-organization seen in chemical and biological systems. In place of that account, he proposes treating the two concepts as conceptual tools that direct researchers toward the features most relevant to explaining how a pattern forms and what properties the resulting pattern will have.
The study is entirely philosophical in character. No experiments were conducted, no quantitative data were collected, and no empirical tests were run. The argument rests on philosophical analysis of the scientific literature and draws on recent philosophical work on how scientific definitions function. The evidence quality cannot be fully assessed because only the abstract was available for review. The central claims could be undermined if the thermodynamic account can be shown to distinguish the two concepts consistently across all relevant cases, or if the proposed alternative turns out to offer no practical improvement in actual scientific usage.
The question of where self-assembly ends and self-organization begins is not merely terminological. How researchers draw that line affects accounts of basal cognition and the emergence of agency from non-living chemical systems, which bear directly on questions about where mind and awareness begin. Cleaner conceptual distinctions could sharpen those accounts, though a philosophical argument alone cannot settle whether they will.
Source: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-026-05793-6