John R. Harness
@cartweel
John R. Harness
One of the major lessons we learn from the unique complexity of life is the following: the only thing we can always expect when manipulating the living world is that there will be unexpected consequences. By definition, those consequences are rarely aligned with the initial goal of our intervention. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and our... See more
Understanding Living Systems
Systems often have the property of self-organization—the ability to structure themselves, to create new structure, to learn, diversify, and complexify. Even complex forms of self-organization may arise from relatively simple organizing rules—or may not.
Donella H. Meadows • Thinking in Systems: International Bestseller
A system that can exercise control is known as a cybernetic system.
Bobby Azarian • The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity
From a cybernetics point of view (Carver & Scheier, 1998), the concept of self- regulation is a complex, multilevel process that enables living systems to remain balanced.
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the concept of selfregulation is a complex, multilevel process that enables living systems to remain balanced. The essence of regulation in all fields is to inform an active system of the results of its actions and to correct them according to those results. A system is considered as self-regulating if it collects and processes information itself
... See more“When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the entire system to a higher order”
– Ilya Prigogine
– Ilya Prigogine
Islands of Coherence: The Quiet Wisdom of Starlings
This region of the dynamic spectrum, where outdated order dissolves into a creative and responsive chaos from which novel order can emerge, is often referred to as “the edge of chaos.” Stuart Kaufman suggested: “The best place for a system to be, in order to respond appropriately to a constantly changing world, is at the edge of chaos.” He
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