On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 6

Before I can return to my original question of how much order a self-
organizing system may assimilate from its environment, I have to show that
there is some structure in our environment. This can be done very easily
indeed, by pointing out that we are obviously not yet in the dreadful state
of Boltzmann's “Heat-Death.” Hence, presently still the entropy increases,
which means that there must be some order—at least now—otherwise we
could not lose it.
Let me briefly summarize the points I have made until now:
(1) By a self-organizing system I mean that part of a system that eats
energy and order from its environment.
(2) There is a reality of the environment in a sense suggested by the accep-
tance of the principle of relativity.
(3) The environment has structure.
Let us now turn to our self-organzing systems. What we expect is that the
systems are increasing their internal order. In order to describe this process,
first, it would be nice if we would be able to define what we mean by “inter-
nal,” and second, if we would have some measure of order.
The first problem arises whenever we have to deal with systems which
do not come wrapped in a skin. In such cases, it is up to us to define the
closed boundary of our system. But this may cause some trouble, because,
if we specify a certain region in space as being intuitively the proper place
to look for our self-organizing system, it may turn out that this region does
not show self-organizing properties at all, and we are forced to make
another choice, hoping for more luck this time. It is this kind of difficulty
which is encountered, e.g., in connection with the problem of the “localiza-
tion of functions” in the cerebral cortex.
Of course, we may turn the argument the other way around by saying
that we define our boundary at any instant of time as being the envelope
of that region in space which shows the desired increase in order. But
here we run into some trouble again; because I do not know of any gad
get which would indicate whether it is plugged into a self- dis organizing
or self-organizing region, thus providing us with a sound operational
definition.
Another difficulty may arise from the possibility that these self-
organizing regions may not only constantly move in space and change in
shape, they may appear and disappear spontaneously here and there,
requiring the “ordometer” not only to follow these all-elusive systems, but
also to sense the location of their formation.
With this little digression I only wanted to point out that we have to be
very cautious in applying the word “inside” in this context, because, even if
the position of the observer has been stated, he may have a tough time
saying what he sees.
Let us now turn to the other point I mentioned before, namely, trying to
find an adequate measure of order. It is my personal feeling that we wish