Self-organization is one of those rare terms where modern natural science and classical natural philosophy appear to say the same thing. Order arises without an external constructor; structures form from the interplay of internal forces; the cosmos needs no engineer. At first glance, the systems theory of the twentieth century sounds like a confirmation of what Schelling formulated as early as 1797. On closer inspection, the two positions are not merely different but fundamentally opposed. The question of what self-organization actually means leads straight into the foundational decision of philosophy: is the cosmos alive or dead?
#Two Languages for the Same Phenomenon
Ilya Prigogine received the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work on dissipative structures: systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium that spontaneously generate order. Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela coined the term autopoiesis — the self-production of living systems. Both describe what natural philosophy has been thinking for centuries: that nature brings itself forth, that order need not be imposed from outside. Reading these findings, you might conclude that natural science has finally caught up with what Schelling anticipated in his Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1797, Breitkopf und Härtel, Leipzig).
But the appearance is deceptive. Prigogine, Maturana, and systems theory as a whole operate within a framework that presupposes matter as fundamentally inanimate. Self-organization within this framework is the astonishing result: from dead matter obeying mathematical laws, structures emerge that look as though they were alive. The surprise that order arises without a constructor presupposes that order without a constructor is improbable — and that in turn presupposes that the foundation of the cosmos is disordered, purposeless, and dead. The self-organization of systems theory is an astonishment within materialism.
#Schelling’s Reversal of the Direction of Explanation
Schelling thinks from the opposite side. In Von der Weltseele (1798, Friedrich Perthes, Hamburg) he describes nature as a thoroughly organized nexus in which two contending forces operate: a positive principle that kindles and sustains movement, and a negative one that returns all phenomena to the cycle. From their interplay follows what Schelling calls the organizing principle that forms the world into a system (cf. Schelling, Von der Weltseele, 1798, chapter on “Dualism in Nature”). The ancients, he writes, intended to indicate this principle through the world-soul.
The decisive difference: for Schelling, self-organization is not a surprising result requiring explanation. It is the normal state. Nature organises itself not despite its material constitution but because it is living in its essence. Jochen Kirchhoff distilled this point in his conversation on Schelling (2021): the cosmos is an absolute organism, organic in its whole and in each of its parts. The organizing principle of mind belongs to the organism. The principle of life is omnipresent (cf. Kirchhoff, J., Schelling: Genius of Natural Philosophy, 2021).
Schelling goes further still. In the same work he formulates the reversal at which the two paths of thought definitively part: life is not a property or product of matter; on the contrary, matter is a product of life. The organism is not a property of individual natural things; on the contrary, individual natural things are restrictions of the universal organism (cf. Schelling, Von der Weltseele, 1798, chapter “On the Origin of the Universal Organism”). If you take this reversal seriously, you no longer need the concept of self-organization as an explanation. Where everything is alive, nothing needs first to organise itself into life.
#Why the Difference Is Not a Matter of Detail
In the Everlast AI Debate (2026), the gap between these two positions became concrete. Joscha Bach stated his position with remarkable clarity: life is an expression of the possibility of self-organization in the cosmos. Certain mathematical laws mean that when initial conditions are given that make it possible for things to organise themselves, then this self-organization comes into being, evolves, and becomes more complex (cf. Kirchhoff, G., Everlast AI Debate, 2026). In Bach’s model, biology follows from self-organization, intelligence from biology, and technology from intelligence. Artificial intelligence is then nothing other than the next stage of the same process.
Gwendolin Kirchhoff objected at a precise point: she refused the machine metaphor. It is a pure linguistic convention carrying certain assumptions that she consciously rejects (cf. Kirchhoff, G., Everlast AI Debate, 2026). The objection concerns not a detail but the entire framework. If self-organization is a mechanical process following from mathematical laws, then there is no principled difference between a cell and a self-optimising algorithm. Both would be self-organization. But if self-organization is an expression of a living cosmos, then an algorithm does not organise itself at all: it is built by human beings who are already moving within an already-living context. The machine is constructed; the organism generates itself.
#The Diagnostic Concept
Self-organization works as a litmus test for philosophical orientation. When you encounter the term, you can ask: is the speaker describing how dead matter surprisingly produces order? Or how a living cosmos unfolds its own order? The answer reveals whether the speaker thinks within the mechanistic paradigm or against a background of living cosmology.
Kirchhoff pointed out that materialist natural science presents metaphysical assumptions as established facts (cf. Kirchhoff, J., Die Erlösung der Natur, Drachen Verlag, 2004). The claim that matter is primary and consciousness derivative is not a result of scientific research but its presupposition. Self-organization as a mechanical process functions only under this presupposition. Without it, the same phenomenon — nature ordering itself — becomes something altogether different: the visible attestation of a cosmos in which mind inheres.
When you encounter the concept of self-organization in a debate about consciousness, artificial intelligence, or the nature of the living, the follow-up question is worth asking: which metaphysics stands behind it? The answer determines whether self-organization provides an explanation or merely names a phenomenon that itself still awaits explanation. Natural philosophy asks about the essence of nature that is at stake in this distinction. Emergence illuminates the related problem of a description that passes itself off as explanation. And the concept of the organic shows what happens when Schelling’s reversal is not merely thought but made into an attitude.
#Sources
- Kirchhoff, G. (2026). Everlast AI Debate: Kirchhoff vs. Bach [conversation].
- Kirchhoff, J. (1998). Was die Erde will. Bergisch Gladbach: Gustav Lübbe Verlag.
- Kirchhoff, J. (2004). Die Erlösung der Natur. Klein Jasedow: Drachen Verlag.
- Kirchhoff, J. (2021). Schelling: Genie der Naturphilosophie [video]. Jochen Kirchhoff — In Memoriam, YouTube.
- Schelling, F. W. J. (1797). Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.
- Schelling, F. W. J. (1798). Von der Weltseele. Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes.