On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 12

FIGURE 3. ( a ) Magnetized square. ( b ) Cube, family I.
FIGURE 4. Ten different families of cubes (see text).
to all the surfaces of small cubes made of light, unmagnetic material, having
the same size as my squares (Fig. 3 b ). Depending upon the choice of which
sides of the cubes have the magnetic north pole pointing to the outside
(Family I), one can produce precisely ten different families of cubes as indi-
cated in Fig. 4.
Suppose now I take a large number of cubes, say, of family I, which is
characterized by all sides having north poles pointing to the outside (or
family I¢ with all south poles), put them into a large box which is also filled
with tiny glass pebbles in order to make these cubes float under friction and
start shaking this box. Certainly, nothing very striking is going to happen:
since the cubes are all repelling each other, they will tend to distribute them-
selves in the available space such that none of them will come too close to
its fellow-cube. If, by putting the cubes into the box, no particular ordering
principle was observed, the entropy of the system will remain constant, or,
at worst, increase a small amount.
In order to make this game a little more amusing, suppose now I collect
a population of cubes where only half of the elements are again members
belonging to family I (or I¢) while the other half are members of family II