What role does intelligence play in self-organizing systems? This question might be more complex than it seems at first because imelligence may exist on multiple levels. The intelligence demonstrated...

What role does intelligence play in self-organizing systems? This question might be more complex than it seems at first because imelligence may exist on multiple levels. The intelligence demonstrated by an ant colony may be much greater than the intelligence of an individual ant. On any particular day during the 1880s, life .in Manchester must have seemed to many people ve1y close to absolute chaos, but could it be said that the city as a whole possessed a certain intelligence? Does Johnson mean to suggest that the ideas and aspirations of individuals do not matter? Are we, f rom the standpoint of complexity theory, intelligent beings? What is intelligence, anyway?