Foerster H. von (1960) On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments. In: Yovits M. C. & Cameron S. (eds.) Self-Organizing Systems. Pergamon Press, London: 31–50. https://cepa.info/1593
Foerster H. von
(
1960)
On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments.
In: Yovits M. C. & Cameron S. (eds.) Self-Organizing Systems. Pergamon Press, London: 31–50.
Fulltext at https://cepa.info/1593
Excerpt: I open my paper by presenting the following thesis: “There are no such things as self-organizing systems!” In the face of the title of this conference I have to give a rather strong proof of this thesis, a task which may not be at all too difficult, if there is not a secret purpose behind this meeting to promote a conspiracy to dispose of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I shall now prove the non-existence of self-organizing systems by reductio ad absurdum of the assumption that there is such a thing as a self-organizing system.

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