16/11 ADAPTATION IN THE MULTISTABLE SYSTEM 



the system will be found to respond by various activities of various 

 subsystems, all co-ordinated to the common end. But though 

 co-ordinated in this way, there will, in general, be no simple 

 relation between the actions of subsystem on subsystem : knowing 

 which subsystems were activated on one line of behaviour, and 

 how they interacted, gives no certainty about which will be 

 activated on some other line of behaviour, or how they will interact. 

 Later I shall pefer again to ' subsystem A adapting to, or 

 interacting with, subsystem B ', but this will be only a form of 

 words, convenient for description: it is to be understood that 

 what is A and what is B may change from moment to moment. 



16/10. This new picture answers the objection to Figure 16/6/1 

 (and the others) that it shows a tidiness nowhere evident when the 

 organism (or the environment) is examined anatomically or 

 histologically. The Figures are diagrams of immediate effects, 

 and are intended purely as an aid to easier thinking about func- 

 tional and behavioural relationships. They must be regarded 

 as showing only functional connexions, and of these only those 

 between variables that are active over some small interval of 

 time. Figure 16/6/1 is thus apt to mislead both by suggesting 

 a permanence of structure that does not exist when dispersion 

 occurs, and by suggesting an actual two-dimensional form that 

 may well have no anatomical or histological existence. Neverthe- 

 less, the functional relationships are indisputable, and the Figure 

 represents them. How they are related to variables physically 

 identifiable in the brain has yet to be discovered. 



16/11. Though the multistable system may look chaotic in 

 action, as the activity fluctuates over the subsystems with the 

 same apparent lack of order as that shown by the smoking 

 chimneys of S. 13/18, yet the tendency is always towards ultimate 

 equilibrium and adaptation. So the next question to ask is that 

 of Chapter 11 : will the adaptation take an excessively long time ? 



Clearly, following the arguments of the previous chapter, much 

 will depend on the richness of connexion between the subsystems 

 — on how much disturbance comes to each subsystem from the 

 others. 



At the limit, when the transfers of disturbance are all zero, 

 the whole system becomes identical with the iterated systems of 



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