The Bactra Review   The Self-Made Tapestry

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I say this despite my admiration for W. Ross Ashby's work on how self-organization can produce adaptations. The situation Ashby considered was essentially that of homeostasis and trial-and-error learning (indeed, trying to show they are the same). This isn't the kind of thing which applies to morphogenesis, where the organism gets it right the first time (so to speak). (Ashby's definition of ``adaptation'' is also more than a little Pickwickian.)