CHAPTER 10 



The Recurrent Situation 



10/1. With the previous chapter we came to the end of our 

 study of how the organism changes from the unadapted to the 

 adapted condition. But this simple problem and solution is only 

 a first step towards our understanding of the living, and especially 

 of the human, brain. To the simple ultrastable system we must 

 obviously add further complications. Thus the living organism 

 not only becomes adapted, but it does so by a process that shows 

 some evidence of efficiency, in the sense that the adaptation is 

 reached by a path that is not grossly far from the path that would 

 involve the least time, and energy, and risk. Though ' efficiency ' 

 is not yet accurately defined in this context, few would deny that 

 the Homeostat's performance suggests something of inefficiency. 

 But before we rush in to make 4 improvements ' we must be clear 

 about what we are assuming. 



10/2. Let us return to first principles. ' Success \ or ' adapta- 

 tion ', means to an organism that, in spite of the world doing its 

 worst, the organism so responded that it survived for the duration 

 necessary for reproduction. 



Now i what the world did ' can be regarded as a single, life- 

 long, and very complex Grand Disturbance (7. to C, Chapter 10), 

 to which the organism produces a single, life-long, and very 

 complex Grand Response; how they are related determines the 

 Grand Outcome — success or failure. In the most general case, 

 the partial disturbances that make up this Grand Disturbance, 

 and the partial responses that make up the organism's Grand 

 Response (I. to C, S. 13/8) may be interrelated to any degree, 

 from zero to complete. (The interrelation is ' complete ' when the 

 Grand Outcome is a function of all the partial responses; it would 

 correspond to an extremely complex relation between partial 

 responses and final outcome.) 



The case of the complete interrelation, though fundamental 



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