🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Bruce Gregory (990423.0925 EDT)]

Bill Powers (990423.0248 MDT)]

> What Simon was talking about, as I would see it now, was the basic PCT
> concept of achieving constant ends by variable means. But
> when Simon wrote
> that piece there was no way to say this, because the accepted
> wisdom was
> still that the environment, in the final analysis, controlled
> behavior.
> Remember that this was the same Simon who wrote that the
> organism is just
> one huge complex input-output function. Knowing what we know
> now, it's easy
> to read an understanding of control processes into descriptions that
> actually came from an entirely different concept of organisms.

This is a lovely example of the change that takes place when you shift
(or fail to shift in Simon's case) to the viewpoint of the organism.
Simon and Powers are talking about the events but Simon's perspective
leads nowhere in particular and Powers' leads to an elegant and powerful
model of living systems.


Bruce Gregory