REGULATING THE VERY LARGE SYSTEM 13/23 



responsible entity Q (of S.13/10) has worked successfully to a goal. 

 With whatever variety the components were initially available, and 

 with whatever variety the designs (i.e. input values) might have varied 

 from the final appropriate form, the maker Q acted in relation to the 

 goal so as to achieve it. He therefore acted as a regulator. Thus, 

 the making of a machine of desired properties (in the sense of getting 

 it rather than one with undesired properties) is an act of regulation. 



Suppose now that this machine of desired properties is the 

 regulator discussed throughout Part III — how is it to be made? 

 The answer is inescapable: by another regulator. 



Is this a reductio ad absurdum of our whole position? I think 

 not. For the obvious question "where does it all start?" is readily 

 answered. As biologists, our fundamental fact (S.10/3) is that the 

 earth has now existed for a long time, that selection has acted 

 throughout this time, and that selection favours the appearance of 

 regulators (S.10/5). These facts alone are sufficient to account for 

 the presence on the earth today of many good regulators. And no 

 further explanation is necessary if it should be found that some of 

 these regulators have as goal the bringing of some mechanism to 

 standard form, even if the standard form is that of a regulator (with 

 goal, of course, distinct from that of the first). The scientist would 

 merely be mildly curious as to why something that could be done 

 directly, in one stage, is actually done indirectly, in two. 



We can thus answer this section's question by saying that a regu- 

 lator can be selected from some general set of mechanisms (many 

 non-regulatory) only by being either the survivor of some process 

 of natural selection or by being made (another process of selection) 

 by another regulator. 



13/23. Is not this making of the desired regulator by two stages 

 wasteful? That it should be arrived at in two stages suggests that 

 the problem of getting a regulator always has to be solved before 

 it can be tackled ! 



Again, what does this imply when the very large system to be 

 regulated is the social and economic world and the responsible 

 entity Q is some set, of sociologists perhaps, whose capacity, as a 

 regulator, is limited to that available to the members of the species 

 Homol Does this imply that no advance in regulation is possible 

 (for the regulator will have to be built by members of the species)? 



It does not; for when regulation is achieved in stages — when a 

 regulator Ri acts so as to bring into existence a regulator R2 — the 

 capacity of R2 is not bounded by that of Rj. The possibility arises 



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