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On Self-Organizing Systems
and Their Environments*
H. VON FOERSTER
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois
I AM somewhat hesitant to make the introductory remarks of my presenta-
tion, because I am afraid I may hurt the feelings of those who so generously
sponsored this conference on self-organizing systems. On the other hand, I
believe, I may have a suggestion on how to answer Dr. Weyl's question
which he asked in his pertinent and thought-provoking introduction: “What
makes a self-organizing system?” Thus, I hope you will forgive me if I open
my paper by presenting the following thesis: “There are no such things as
self-organizing systems!”
In the face of the title of this conference I have to give a rather strong
proof of this thesis, a task which may not be at all too difficult, if there is
not a secret purpose behind this meeting to promote a conspiracy to dispose
of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I shall now prove the non-existence
of self-organizing systems by
reductio ad absurdum
of the assumption that
there is such a thing as a self-organizing system.
Assume a finite universe,
U
0
, as small or as large as you wish (see Fig.
1
a
), which is enclosed in an adiabatic shell which separates this finite uni-
verse from any “meta-universe” in which it may be immersed. Assume, fur-
thermore, that in this universe,
U
0
, there is a closed surface which divides
this universe into two mutually exclusive parts: the one part is completely
occupied with a self-organizing system
S
0
, while the other part we may call
the environment
E
0
of this self-organizing system:
S
0
&
E
0
=
U
0
.
I may add that it is irrelevant whether we have our self-organizing system
inside or outside the closed surface. However, in Fig. 1 the system is
assumed to occupy the interior of the dividing surface.
Undoubtedly, if this self-organizing system is permitted to do its job of
organizing itself for a little while, its entropy must have decreased during
this time:
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