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Classical Papers - Principles of the self-organizing systemE:CO Special Double Issue Vol. 6 Nos. 1-2 2004 pp. 102-126

Principles of the self-organizing systemW. Ross Ashby

Originally published as Ashby, W. R. (1962). “Principles of the self-organizing system,” in Principles of Self-Orga-nization: Transactions of the University of Illinois Symposium, H. Von Foerster and G. W. Zopf, Jr. (eds.), Pergamon Press: London, UK, pp. 255-278. Reproduced with the kind permission of Ross Ashby’s daughters, Sally Bannister, Ruth Pettit, and Jill Ashby. We would also like to thank John Ashby for his generous assistance in obtaining their permission.

The brilliant British psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and mathematician Ross Ashby was one of the pioneers in early and mid-phase cybernetics

and thereby one of the leading progenitors of modern complexity theory. Not one to take either commonly used terms or popular notions for granted, Ashby probed deeply into the meaning of supposedly self-organizing systems. At the time of the following article, he had been working on a mathematical formalism of his homeostat, a hypothetical machine established on an axiomatic, set theoretical foundation that was

where the homeostat could safely function, a new

or organization (see Dupuy, 2000). Like the role of ran-

otherwise it expired.

One of Ashby’s goals was to repudiate that interpretation of the notion of self-organization, one

change its own organization (or, in his phraseology, the functional mappings). For Ashby, self-organiza-

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propensity for autonomous change. We offer Ashby’s careful reasoning here as an enlightening guide for coming to terms with key ideas in complexity theory

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examination of the underlying assumptions.

Jeffrey Goldstein

Classical

Dupuy, J. (2000). The Mechanization of the Mind,

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