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Autonomous machine (system)

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Encyclopedia Autopoietica
International Encyclopedia of Systems & Cybernetics

 

Principia Cybernetica (web)

Encyclopedia Autopoietica
Any machine / system exhibiting autonomy (in Varela’s specific sense). A member of the class which subsumes autopoietic systems. This general class is defined by organizational closure in these systems’ constitution. In the following two definitions (with some variation in phrasing), Varela states autonomous systems are:

A. "...mechanistic (dynamic) systems defined as a unity by their organization. We shall say that autonomous systems are organizationally closed. That is, their organization is characterized by processes such that (1) the processes are related as a network, so that they recursively depend on each other in the generation and realization of the processes themselves, and (2) they constitute the system as a unity recognizable in the space (domain) in which the processes exist." (Varela, 1979, p. 55)

B."... defined as a composite unity by a network of interactions of components that (i) through their interactions recursively regenerate the network of interactions that produced them, and (ii) realize the network as a unity in the space in which the components exist by constituting and specifying the unity’s boundaries as a cleavage from the background..." (Varela, 1981a, p. 15)

International Encyclopedia of Systems & Cybernetics
[System (Autonomous)]

"A system whose action results of its own impulses, which selects its goals and the means to pursue them according to its knowledge of the laws of the world and its present perception" (F. BONSACK, 1990, p. 118).

There are various understandings of what autonomy means; for a general survey, see: Autonomy.

F. BONSACK adds: "The source of actions is not however immune to any feedback from the world,... but these inputs should not be considered as the source of action: they only modulate the internal source" (Ibid.).

This is the basic meaning of the concept of autopoiesis.

R. ROSEN states: "It is absolutely essential... that the time-dependent inputs, or forcings, do not change the autonomous dynamics in any way. It must neither create nor violate the system constraints, more generally, it must not change any of the parameters which govern both transient and asymptotic behaviors in the autonomous system... This restriction is not often mentioned explicitly, but it is absolutely basic. Unless we impose it, the very identity of the system will depend on the environment with which it is interacting, i.e. the identity of the system in vacuo will be different from what it is in a specific context which is forcing it, that identity has become, in a sense, context-dependent" (1993, p. 21).