Goluke, Ulrich," Towards a General Theory of Adaptive Systems", 1984
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A generic model of adaptive systems behaviour is developed in causal loop form. Examples from many different living systems are given. Living systems do adapt: plants turn towards the light; birds fly south in the winter; people acquire a taste for champagne; revolutionaries become government bureaucrats; and cultures have dealt with horseless carriages and jet travel. Living systems also collapse: lakes get polluted and die; dinosaurs are no more; people commit suicide; there is no more Federalist party; and the Indian Nations of North America have all disappeared. As a system dynamist I am interested in the attribute or, more exactly, the minimal set of attributes of all these systems that can explain the capability to adapt and also the obvious limits to that same capability.