ORDER and RANDOMNESS
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2378 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Epistemology, ontology or semantics, Methodology or model |
The relation between order and randomness remains still a vexing problem.
While a complex system needs strong constraints to maintain its coherence, these constraints reduce its adaptive potential and do not allow it to be more than a link in the chain of evolution. On the other hand, absolute randomness would preclude any order at all. Our conceptual opposition between order and randomness seems to be one more of these more or less artificial mental dichotomies.
When numerous elements of one kind become connected as in a population, or even in a composite system at its critical state, order seems to spring out from randomness at the so-called edge of chaos (self-organized criticality), probably because some rules of behavior emerge and stabilize. The cause or condition seems to be, for the population or composite system, to receive recurrent inputs of energy.