ENVIRONMENT as a filter
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 1122 ▶ |
| Object type | General information |
R. MARGALEF equates biological mutations with noise in the information that specify the organization of the organism through messages.
He quotes H. JACOBSON who writes: “Those messages, which pass through the filter (environment) with a gain equal to, or greater than unity cause positive feedback (self-sustaining continuation of the species). Those noisy messages which cannot pass through the filter (unfavorable mutations are rejected (bred out of the species) after a sufficient number of transmissions about the loop. Eventually the message takes on a character which is primarily due to the filter, in which the gain is maximized (natural adaptation). And the maximal gain messages may be vastly more complex than the original message (evolution) (1955, p.119-27).
The concept is clearly valid for any kind of environment.