In minds of intellectual community of the present day the notion of synergy is first of all associated with synergetics. The program of our workshop is also in full accordance with this fact: it shows that almost all the presented talks are devoted to synergetics in its numerous aspects and branches. The situation makes it natural to expect that the information on what is synergy can be found in synergetics in the first place. But here comes the first paradox of my theme: if I ask the question: What is synergy? – I shall not be able to find the answer in synergetics. The notion of synergy is neither used nor even introduced in synergetics. It is well-known that the connection synergy – synergetics is in no way accidental: as Hermann Haken explained repeatedly, this connection has been put by him from the very start into the idea and the name of a new discipline invented by him. But Haken makes it clear at the same time that the Greek word συνεργεια has served for him only in its literal, etymological meaning: as a source of intuitive ideas about cooperation, collective phenomena, concerted action and interaction, etc. – so that the new discipline could be conceived as “science of cooperation”. The word has helped to form up the name for synergetics, and after this it was not needed anymore; the new science did not make it one of its terms or concepts. On the other hand, however, the fact remained that processes and phenomena studied in synergetics have the properties characterized by synergia even if the word is not conceptualized and is understood only in the initial intuitive sense.