Further, this running down involves a loss of energy and that it is irreversible. Furtunately, there is. A brilliant scientist, still with us, Ilya Prigogine of Belgium, a Nobel laureate, gives in his book Order out of Chaos a ray of hope and cheer. A self-organizing system is one that is living. A machine cannot get back the energy-loss by itself.
Fresh energy has to be given from outside.
Left to itself it will become dead. It is only in a living organism that self-organization holds. A wound in a living body can and does heal itself, unlike a machine which needs outside help to restart its operations. A living system is open, not closed. There is a free exchange between itself and the environment, flexibility and no rigidity as in a machine.