On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 3

It is clear from my previous example with the large envelope, that here
too—if irreversible processes should occur—the entropy of the system now
within the envelope must increase, hence, as time goes on, the system would
disorganize itself, although in certain regions the entropy may indeed have
decreased. One may now insist that we should have wrapped our envelope
just around this region, since it appears to be the proper self-organizing part
of our system. But again, I could employ that same argument as before, only
to a smaller region, and so we could go on for ever, until our would-be self-
organizing system has vanished into the eternal happy hunting grounds of
the infinitesimal.
In spite of this suggested proof of the non-existence of self-organizing
systems, I propose to continue the use of the term “self-organizing system,”
whilst being aware of the fact that this term becomes meaningless, unless
the system is in close contact with an environment, which posseses available
energy and order , and with which our system is in a state of perpetual inter-
action, such that it somehow manages to “live” on the expenses of this
environment.
Although I shall not go into the details of the interesting discussion of
the energy flow from the environment into the system and out again, I may
briefly mention the two different schools of thought associated with this
problem, namely, the one which considers energy flow and signal flow as a
strongly linked, single-channel affair (i.e. the message carries also the food,
or, if you wish, signal and food are synonymous) while the other viewpoint
carefully separates these two, although there exists in this theory a signifi-
cant interdependence between signal flow and energy availability.
I confess that I do belong to the latter school of thought and I am par-
ticularly happy that later in this meeting Mr. Pask, in his paper The Natural
History of Networks , 2 will make this point of view much clearer than I will
ever be able to do.
What interests me particularly at this moment is not so much the energy
from the environment which is digested by the system, but its utilization of
environmental order. In other words, the question I would like to answer
is: “How much order can our system assimilate from its environment, if any
at all?”
Before tackling this question, I have to take two more hurdles, both of
which represent problems concerned with the environment. Since you have
undoubtedly observed that in my philosophy about self-organizing systems
the environment of such systems is a conditio sine qua non I am first of all
obliged to show in which sense we may talk about the existence of such an
environment. Second, I have to show that, if there exists such an environ-
ment, it must possess structure.
The first problem I am going to eliminate is perhaps one of the oldest
philosophical problems with which mankind has had to live. This problem
arises when we, men, consider ourselves to be self-organizing systems. We
may insist that introspection does not permit us to decide whether the world