After some research it seems more obvious than ever to me that things are capable of organizing themselves based on “battles” that take place on every level. There’s no set good or evil, right or wrong side. Just small victories and defeats that eke out the branches and curves and shapes of life. All of these struggles generate energy, pushes and pulls, which drives the collection of these things as a whole to become more and more evolved.

from http://mosaicscience.com/story/man-who-grew-eyes –

Yet, he said, he still could not explain how cells organise themselves into such complex tissues. “It’s surprising to see ordered structures emerging without any external forces or influences,” he told me, likening it to politics – a kind of cellular democracy. Throughout development, the cells act upon and influence each other’s behaviour; pushing and pulling, they jostle for space and compete for the limited supply of the resources that they need to grow.

“Self-organisation means that all these processes are democratically regulated,” he said. “The whole process is entirely self-driven. The cells know how to make the optic cup or layered cortex. I do not tell them what to do – they talk to each other and decide for themselves.”

Sasai believed that self-organisation only emerges from populations of a certain size. “This kind of thing can only be seen in groups of about 1,000 to 100,000 cells,” he said. “At this level, cells can be directly democratic, and don’t need a special governor or president to orchestrate them. In a village of several hundred, the people can probably get together and decide what to do, but a country would be a total mess without a government.”

“Self-organisation is so mysterious,” he continued, his reserved demeanour giving way to a child-like curiosity. “We still can’t explain why the cells come together to make an eye. There must be more principles that we still don’t understand yet. It’s something that makes me completely in awe of life.”