Self-Organization being a Discipline on its own?

Self-organizing mechanisms and approaches can be found in many disciplines. Should we regard self-organizing systems as a discipline on its own?

Do we need experts that specialized on self-organizing systems or rather engineers with primary knowledge in some domain (eg, wireless systems, traffic management…) that took an introductional course to SO?

Viewpoint 1

Before answering this question, the following critical questions should be approached:

• Research: Is there a common vision for the field?
  • Example: common vision in AI community
  • Different methodologies used in applications involving SO
• Are there fundamental research questions that would require investigation from dedicated SO researcher?
• Teaching
  • Skeptical on full curriculum, e.g., on Master level
  • Rather put focus on SO for existing curricula
• Analogy: software engineering as a discipline
  • Can SOS engineering achieve a similar role?
  • What can SO experts contribute to engineer particular solutions (e.g., as part of a project)?

An interesting aspect is the emergence of many activities on self-organizing systems in the last few years:

• Groups working on Self-Organizing Systems
• Conferences about Self-Organizing Systems