Abstract
Self-organization as a concept has appeared in several arenas, including explanations of physical phenomena, biological systems, and intelligence. A guiding principle for self-organizing systems, especially at the level of intelligent systems, has not been settled upon. So-called autocatakinetic (ACK) systems attempt to provide such a principle through macroscopic thermodynamics but to date have not been formally defined. We attempt to extend ACK by developing a formal model commensurate with its defining properties.