PHYSIOLOGICAL KEGULATIONS 439 



There are plenty of other notions about regulations. Very 

 often a process is said to be regulatory only when an investigator 

 thinks it is advantageous to the organism. Or again, regulation is 

 such when states or changes occur that do not usually occur in dead 

 or inanimate systems. Very often it is stipulated that ''active" 

 adjustments or that energy-consuming maintenances be involved. 

 There are many phenomena, commonly said to be unregulated, in 

 which objects warm up in a cool environment, as when water and 

 sulfuric acid mix ; while there are many others, still said to be regu- 

 lated, in which objects merely cool in a cool environment, even as 

 a man cools off after exercise. The term regulation is in that case 

 reserved for unexpected phenomena. I believe that on further 

 analysis none of these definitions is practical or operational. Ill- 

 defined usages of the word regulation dangerously enforce the urge 

 to coin a new one. 



Regulation, being an aspect of all phenomena concerned with 

 maintenance and recovery, may consist in (1) resistance to load- 

 ing, (2) preference among conditions, especially by shunning some, 

 and (3) compensation or correction of loads. In general, it might 

 be counted more clever for the organism (1) to be impervious to 

 certain components, and (2) to avoid those components that are 

 deleterious, instead of having (5) to compensate for disturbances. 



A man resists the creation of heat deficit or excess by clothing 

 himself appropriately, prefers air-conditioning, and compensates 

 a deficit or excess with circulatory modifications. A turtle prefers 

 moderate air temperatures, and compensates (by modification of 

 process) only an excess of heat. An earthworm only selects its 

 environmental temperature, avoiding extremes. The actual effec- 

 tiveness of a single means of response to heat is indicated by the 

 wide distribution of earthworms. 



The roles of these three kinds of maintenance among diverse 

 organisms may be grasped by table 44. The grouping of several 

 components may suggest that many vicissitudes are to be continu- 

 ally met by each individual. Each species has a diverse armamen- 

 tarium for coping with them. Very often one sort of activity, such 

 as locomotion, partially serves to cope with an enormous number 

 of components. Like swallowing, it is a general form of response 

 that in specific form is keyed to each of many loads, and perhaps 

 in addition takes blanket care of newly-encountered and unspecified 

 ones. 



