Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Ernest Naylor
- Preface: ‘A fragment of a possible world’
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Growth unlimited: blooms, swarms and plagues
- 3 Self-regulating systems: from machines to humans
- 4 The wealth of homeodynamic responses
- 5 A cybernetic approach to growth analysis
- 6 A control mechanism for Maia
- 7 The three levels of adaptation
- 8 Population growth and its control
- 9 Hierarchy: a controlled harmony
- 10 History of hormesis and links to homeopathy
- 11 Maian mechanisms for hormesis and catch-up growth
- 12 Cellular growth control and cancer
- 13 Human overpopulation
- 14 Our finite Earth
- 15 The Maia hypothesis and anagenesis
- Glossary
- Further reading
- References
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Ernest Naylor
- Preface: ‘A fragment of a possible world’
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Growth unlimited: blooms, swarms and plagues
- 3 Self-regulating systems: from machines to humans
- 4 The wealth of homeodynamic responses
- 5 A cybernetic approach to growth analysis
- 6 A control mechanism for Maia
- 7 The three levels of adaptation
- 8 Population growth and its control
- 9 Hierarchy: a controlled harmony
- 10 History of hormesis and links to homeopathy
- 11 Maian mechanisms for hormesis and catch-up growth
- 12 Cellular growth control and cancer
- 13 Human overpopulation
- 14 Our finite Earth
- 15 The Maia hypothesis and anagenesis
- Glossary
- Further reading
- References
- Index
Summary
The broadest and most complete definition of Life will be – The continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.
Herbert SpencerThe truths of cybernetics are not conditional on their being derived from some other branch of science. Cybernetics has its own foundations.
W. Ross AshbyAmong the most fertile ideas introduced into biology in recent years are those of cybernetics … control theory obtrudes everywhere into biology.
Peter B. MedawarTHE DEVELOPMENT OF BIOLOGICAL CYBERNETICS
I watched a kestrel from a building high on the Citadel overlooking Plymouth Sound. It hovered at arms' length from the window in a stiff breeze, holding its position for long periods so perfectly that one could not detect the slightest movement of its head. To maintain this static hover, its wings beat quickly, varying a little in frequency and angle to adjust to the buffeting breeze, as it watched intently for any movement of prey on the ground below. It reminded me of Gerard Manley Hopkins' lines from his poem The Windhover: ‘how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing’. Occasionally the bird sheared away: ‘then off, off forth on swing’; to return again and take up its position as before, as if to dispel any doubts I might still have of its control in the air. ‘The achieve of, the mastery of the thing!’
In the same way our control systems master the continuous variation in the environment in which we live, holding steady a host of different internal processes against the continuous fluctuation of external change.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Cybernetic View of Biological GrowthThe Maia Hypothesis, pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010