No Compromise

Solar technology is burdened with a stigma that contradicts a sense of proportion and beauty in building. Arbitrarily attached to new or existing construction, the technology is often associated with a small clique of individuals disenfranchised from the mainstream. This project is designed to challenge these perceptions and reestablish the ideals of solar energy by integrating architecture and technology. It pushes existing paradigms by proposing architectural form that celebrates solar power while obtaining a high level of system integration. As each technical decision was measured against its contribution to spatial effect, the project attained a simultaneous sense of the sustainable and the beautiful.     

Some comments on the concepts of regulation and positional information in morphogenesis

In this present paper, the rather metaphorical ideas of ‘ positional information ’ and ‘regulation’ as used hy Wolpert (1968, 1960) in connection with morphogenesis are placed in a more general dynamical context in which those ideas are sharply defined in terms of the stability properties of classes of dynamical Systems.     

BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS AS ORGANIZATIONAL PARADIGMS†

It is suggested that biological systems provide the best source of paradigms for the consideration of the kinds of organizations which we find in human systems; social, political or economic. A brief review of the several ways in which biological activities can be mathematically modelled is given, together with indications of the manner in which these ideas can be extended and applied beyond biology.     

Symmetrical overhead in flow networks

Recent work by one of the authors has identified the average mutual information and the conditional entropy as two measures from information theory that are useful in quantifying the system organization and incoherence, respectively. While the scaled average mutual information, or network ascendency, is inherently symmetrical with respect to inputs and outputs, the scaled conditional entropy, or overhead, remains asymmetrical. Employing the joint entropy, instead of the conditional entropy, to characterize the overhead, results in a symmetrical overhead and also permits the decomposition of the system capacity, or complexity, into components useful in following the response of the whole system to perturbations.     

Minimal realizations of transfer-function matrices by means of matrix continued fraction

The matrix continued fraction technique is utilized to obtain the minimal realization of a transfer-function matrix with various inputs and outputs. If the ratio of the rank and the order of a square transfer-function matrix is an integer and there are no numerically ill-conditional elements in the matrix, then the matrix Routh algorithm is applied for the minimal realization. A method is also presented to deal with ill-conditional cases.     

Milling parameter optimization through a discrete variable transformation

Although milling is one of the most common chip metal removal processes, little has been done to aid in identifying the optimum operational conditions for milling processes. In this paper, a mathematical model for milling operations is developed and the five primary control variables identified. The model is then decomposed and an efficient optimization procedure developed for control variable identification.     

CYBERNETICS,TELEOLOGY, AND SCIENCE

Cybernetics has evolved far beyond the problems of servomechanics and simple models of purposive behavior into a substantial body of theory with potential for resolving long-standing controversies surrounding the role of teteological concepts and reductionism in scientific explanation. The diverse research contributing to modem cybernetics views natural adaptation, goal-directed behavior, and conscious purpose as varying expressions of circular causal, recursive, and system/environment relationships along a continuum of organized complexity. This mode of analysis suggests that hierarchy in the sciences springs from a hierarchy of causal circuits in the structure of ideological phenomena, for which the dual, part/whole nature at any particular level forces a bifurcation of discourse into distinct “logical types” according to the observer's focus. The cybernetic paradigm may thus provide connecting tissue by which the full spectrum of explanation, from physicochemical to teleological, is joined in a coherent scientific framework constituting “reduction in principle” of living systems, even while truly meaningful translation of one science into another is precluded by the disparate logics of their subject matter.     

COMPLEXITY AND ERROR IN SOCIAL DYNAMICS

A model of cultural dynamics based on the work of Colin Renfrew is briefly described. It is shown how the general concepts of complexity and error pertain to this kind of cultural model. In particular, it is suggested that conflict in cultural contexts arises through the generation of diverse simple models of the culture, created by different members of the culture. We indicate how general system-theoretic concepts can thus be brought to bear on problems of conflict in and between cultures.