Re: energy vs. work

(message from christian@igw.tuwien.ac.at):

Dear all,

I would suggest that self-organising physical and chemical systems are =
not just reactive, but also reflective in the sense of a =
"widerspiegelung": they not only react in some way, also some =
influence/stimuli/perturbation results in the emergence of order and =
structural changes, a stimuli is reflected within the structure as an =
emerging new quality. this reflection is not a mechanical one, but a =
non-deterministic one that is constrained by systemic properties.
people like klaus fuchs-kittowski and herbert h=F6rz have defined =
information in a very broad sense as reflection. i think that reflection =
is an aspect of information-production that can be found in all =
self-organising systems.=20
i would agree that in social systems one can speak of self-reflection =
and reflexion on the informational level, as well as of =
self-transcendence in the sense of jantsch that the system has the =
ability to go beyond its own boundaries and can creatively influence =
information-production in relationship to other systems. this will also =
result in communicative actions.
as for living systems i am not sure how the internal processing of signs =
should be called. there are already more durable, teleonomic patterns of =
behaviour, these systems are self-maintaining and one maybe can already =
distinguish a syntactic from a semantic level. self-maintainance of the =
informational patterns produced for a more durable time than in physical =
systems maybe an aspect to think of.
anyway, i would suggest to use the term reflection in a broader sense, =
so that all self-organising systems are considered reflective ones.

christian
Received on Mon May 27 12:27:17 2002