Complex Adaptive Systems Theory describes what self-organizing systems do. This is the constructive version — the same mechanisms treated as design requirements rather than observations.
Each stop is a page in the graph. The order is an argument — but every one of them is also a door into the rest of it, so you can leave the path wherever it stops being useful.
Complex adaptive systems are recovered as the restricted case. Remove the constructive apparatus and what remains is the descriptive account the field already has — which is the relation a stronger theory should bear to its predecessor.