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ANNOTATION:
Life as self-organisation in flows
To increase fitness?
- It is not an ultimate goal.
All living systems are self-organised systems, more exactly, being organised by flows - of food, water, air, money, etc. If all of these flows would run out, nothing else can provide life.
Living systems differ from simple self-organised structures by their complexity, various activities and especially by production similar to them structures (children, child firms and so on). All activities are also generated by the energy of flows.
How should we act then?
- We must take care of flows, ourselves and the like, facilities to act, product and take care, act, product, etc. Fitness is only one of these facilities.
The main care must be of keeping characteristics of flows in certain limits. Proceeding from external flows to internal ones gives the demand to keep characteristics of the last in certain limits also. Recalling that flows stream in channels, we obtain such demand about characteristics of channels.
Behaviour of the whole body must be also in certain limits to keep above characteristics in certain limits and to keep body as a whole. And so on. Everything is likely to be in certain limits.
The care of keeping characteristics in certain limits (certain domain) I call "property preservation". Some ideas and models, describing flat case of property preservation, can be found in my book "Learning To Be A God. Viable Systems Creation" (rus, 1992).
Copyright© 1997 Principia Cybernetica -
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