Surviving by Serving: Functional Relevance Drives Self-Organization in Complex Adaptive Systems

2026-06-25

AI Summary

This study investigates how complex adaptive systems spontaneously form and sustain functional organization in the absence of centralized control through local mechanisms. It introduces the “Service-by-Survival” (SBS) principle, implemented in a multi-agent model wherein agents receive local feedback only when their outputs are utilized by other components, thereby driving self-organization. Centered on functional utilization, this mechanism enables the emergence—without external selection pressure—of stable transformation chains, core–periphery structures, and novel system states that collectively achieve goals otherwise unattainable. The findings demonstrate that SBS constitutes a general self-organization principle, whose intrinsic pre-adaptive search phase can generate subsequent functional solutions, offering a new paradigm for understanding system evolution in the absence of explicit goal-directedness.

Abstract

Complex adaptive systems often develop organized structures without centralized control. Yet the local mechanisms by which functional organization emerges and persists remain incompletely understood. Here we propose Surviving by Serving (SBS) as a general principle of self-organization: components persist as long as their outputs are utilized by other components, whereas prolonged non-utilization promotes adaptation and exploration. To investigate this idea, we introduce a minimal multi-agent model in which agents transform shared resources and receive only local feedback when their outputs are subsequently utilized elsewhere in the system. Despite the absence of global objectives, the system spontaneously self-organizes into functional interaction networks. We observe the emergence of stable transformation chains, core-periphery organization, and the generation of novel states that enable previously inaccessible target conditions to be reached. Remarkably, self-sustaining interaction networks can arise even without external selection pressures, creating a pre-adaptive search phase from which later functional solutions emerge. These findings suggest that functional utilization may provide a simple, substrate-independent mechanism for the emergence and stabilization of organized structure in complex adaptive systems.

Problem

• complex adaptive systems
• self-organization
• functional organization
• emergence
• local mechanisms

Innovation

• self-organization
• functional utilization
• complex adaptive systems
• multi-agent model
• pre-adaptive search