"Critically interacting components self-organize to form potentially evolving structures exhibiting a hierarchy of emergent system properties.
The elements of this definition relate to the following:

Critically Interacting - System is information rich, neither static nor chaotic

Components - Modularity and autonomy of part behaviour implied

Self-Organize - Attractor structure is generated by local contextual interactions

Potentially Evolving - Environmental variation selects and mutates attractors

Hierarchy - Multiple levels of structure and responses appear (hyperstructure)

Emergent System Properties - New features are evident which require a new vocabulary"
http://www.calresco.org/sos/sosfaq.htm#1.1

"Hegel's dialectic, as well as Jung's transcendent function, is not to be thought of as only a method of reason, but also a natural function of nature (Inwood, 1992, p.79)."

http://members.tripod.com/~rickcw50/ed4-2cla.htm

Hegel's dialectic involves one or more concepts taken as fixed, sharply defined and distinct from each other. This is the stage of Understanding. When we reflect on such categories, one or more contradictions emerge in them. This is the stage of Dialectic or negative reason. The result of this dialectic is a new, higher category, which embraces the earlier categories and resolves the contradiction in them. This is the stage of Speculation or of positive reason (Inwood, 1992, p.80).
Ibid

"Man is forever locked "in the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh... and [the] soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met" (Kanzantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ). Synthesis is the product of this violent war "between the spirit and the flesh." The transcendent function, through a dialectical synthesis, brings together opposites in a reconciling attempt to regulate the psyche, or the self. When opposites are brought together it is called the coniunctio, or conjunction. This is Jung's term for Hegel's third step of the dialectic motion. Borrowed from the ancient alchemists, it refers "to a chemical combination; in psychology it points to the union of opposites and the birth of new possibilities" (Sharp, 1991, p.38).

Jung's particular contribution to the psychology of conflict was to point out that if a person can hold the tension between the conflicting opposites, then eventually something will happen in the psyche to resolve the conflict. The outer circumstances may in fact remain the same, but a change takes place in the individual. This change, essentially irrational and unforeseeable, appears as a new attitude to both oneself and others; energy previously locked up in a state of indecision is released and movement becomes possible. Jung calls this the transcendent function, because what happens transcends the conflicting opposites. (Daryl Sharp, 1988)