Cybernetics & Human Knowing - Thesaurus pilot project
Edited by M&T Thellefsen

Closure

Definition
The property of a system to maintain its own internal order and identity within defined and permanent boundaries.

A transformation is closed if its range is contained in its domain.

Circularity is fundamental to most notions of closure

Relations:

Autonomy
Autopoietic machine
Autopoietic Organization
circularity
living systems
self-creation
social communication

 

Definitions:

Principia Cybernetica
Encyclopedia Autopoietica
International Encyclopedia of Systems & Cybernetics

 

Principia Cybernetica (web)
A transformation is closed if its range is contained in its domain.

A system is closed if it provides its own explanation and no references to an input are required.

Circularity is fundamental to most notions of closure

 

Encyclopedia Autopoietica
The property of a system to maintain its own internal order and identity within defined and permanent boundaries

The condition for closure is internal recursivity in the system.

As to cognitive processes closure leads to their circularity.

 

International Encyclopedia of Systems & Cybernetics
The quality or property of a descriptive network N such that one or another of the constituent elements of N (depicted or described as mapping onto N) interconnect wholly within the confines (explicit or implicit) of N itself.