THE SYSTEMS CONCEPT REDEFINED 



297 



system, or more properly a subsystem operating within a larger system — the 

 environment. To man there are inputs, and from man there are outputs. 

 Inputs are information, or noise, and energy. Outputs are information, 

 work, or losses. (One would hope that only some of his output is noise.) 



Figure 11-1 illustrates this concept. Note the directions indicated by the 

 arrows. For example, information enters through the sensory organs which 

 are responsive to chemical, electrical, gravitational, electromagnetic, and 

 mechanical stimuli. It enters raw, essentially unsorted, except for the fact 

 that only part of the information available from the environment is able to 

 enter through the five senses. For example only those electromagnetic radia- 

 tions of wave length 4000 to 7000 A are recorded through the eyes, and some 

 in the infrared region is detected by mechanoreceptors just below the sur- 

 face of the skin. Otherwise the whole spectrum of electromagnetic radia- 

 tions in the environment so far as we known goes undetected.* 



MAN 



ENVIRONMENT 



Figure 11-1. The Human Being as a "Black Box" in His Environment. 



Some of the inputs are ordered, sorted, and organized (lectures to students 

 presumably are). This is true information. Some inputs are not ordered, nor 

 are they even useful; this is noninformation, or noise. 



Work and losses, as well as thermodynamic and practical efficiencies, 

 were discussed in Chapter 7, and the reader should recall again the prin- 

 ciples of available and unavailable energy, and of efficient and nonefficient 

 operation of machines. 



*This raises the irrelevant but interesting question of how the still-controversial extra- 

 sensory perception (ESP) might occur, with its manifestations of telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. 

 Supposing we accept the psychological evidence in favor of ESP, the job in biophysics is to 

 try to understand how ESP could occur. Speculations can take three directions. Thus informa- 

 tion reaches our central nervous system directly (i.e.. not via the senses) as: (a) electromag- 

 netic radiations of wave lengths out of the range of the senses; (b) matter waves of wave lengths 

 out of the range of the senses; or (c) some new, yet undiscovered radiation 



