MODEL -- REGULATOR IDENTITY (Law of requisite)
Charles François (2004). MODEL -- REGULATOR IDENTITY (Law of requisite), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(2): 2149.
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2149 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics, Methodology or model |
- “Any regulator that is maximally both successful and simple must be isomorphic with the system being regulated” (R.C. CONANT and W.R. ASHBY, 1970, p.89).
The authors made various interesting comments:
1) Models can be unnecessarily complex.
2) The search for the best regulator is essentially a search among the mappings from S into R.
3) The proof of the theorem avoids all mentions of inputs (an aspect correlated to the autopoesis concept).
4) A time-varying model could be needed if the regulation is to be time-varying.
5) To those who study the brain, the theorem founds a “theoretical neurology”: “There can no longer be question about whether the brain models its environment: it must” (p.96-97).
Another interesting line should be looking for social regulators (Values? Norms?), their degree of isomorphy to the social system and their eventual time-variance.