Cybernetic causality: A unitary theory of causal recursion in natural and social systems (Q1075978)

This is the first in a series of three articles [the rest are to appear in Math. Soc. Sci. 13 (1986-87)] aiming at rigorous definitions of self- steering, self-regulation and other cybernetic categories of goal- directed dynamical systems in terms of modern dynamics. They will be based on a topological analysis of the fields of trajectories generated by time-transitive continuous functions \(F: E\times R\to E\), and generalized by means of the t to \(t+1\) maps \(\phi\) to discontinuous cases. But topological tools will be applied later, in the second paper. In the present article only preliminary distinctions, between nilpotent and full causal recursions \(\phi\), between two types of self-organization (due to Ashby and Prigogine, resp.), and between self-steering and self- regulation are made. The roles of the concept of causal recursion (in distinction from causal law and causal relation) in the fundamental theory of classical and quantum physics are pointed out. Every natural system can be assumed to have causal recursion in a complete state description.