What is Synergetics?

If you look in your typical dictionary you will find that the word 'synergetics' does not appear there (at least, it didn't in mine), but the word 'synergy' does and is defined as "a combined effect of drugs, organs, etc., that exceeds the sum of their individual effects. It's derived from the Greek 'synergos' meaning working together. Synergetics was introduced in the late 1970s by Hermann Haken who noticed profound similarities between the fundamental mathematical models which are used to describe the cooperative behavior of various active systems in physics, chemistry, biology, and social sciences.

Synergetic is a science of structure and it seeks to find general laws that govern the formation of these structures. By structures one means everything from the shape of the galaxies to that of snow crystals; from ant colonies to biological cells; structures emerging out of chaos and of the human mind. The latter being, perhaps, most pertinent if we consider that physics, chemistry, psychology, sociology, theology etc., are all, in essence, structures of the human minds. If one is able to extract the governing dynamics of the formation of the structures of the human mind…we'll be able to see the universe and ourselves in a whole new way!

So, in a sense, synergetic can be thought of as a shop where fundamental models of cooperative behavior (structure formation) are worked up and their careful mathematical analysis is performed. The fact that it's possible to extract the laws and patterns of cooperative behavior of active systems seems, at first glance, to be surprising and not at all representative of biological or social systems. Even a single prokaryote represents an extremely complicated object, not to mention the extreme complexity of human beings who are individual elements of social systems. However! In cooperative interactions these elements often act is if they were simple units that can be described by a set of a few variables. Their vast internal complexity is not directly manifested in their interactions. This, perhaps, is a direct consequence of evolution for if one were to allow the elements to reflect all their internal complexity in the interactions, then the system as a whole would most probably not be able to display any stable and predictable behavior.

Thus, the wide variety found in the interactions and activities of the living systems emerges out of interplay of many simple ordered patterns that correspond to different structural levels. Ultimately, it is this notion that makes the mathematical description of the living systems feasible. (Note that concept of the order-parameter and the enslavement, which are at the heart of synergetics, emerged out of Ginzburg-Landau Theory of phase transitions).

It seems fair to conclude that this self-organizations phenomenon, or emergence of structures, differs in inorganic and biological systems not in the type of individual patterns but rather in the complexity of the emerging hierarchical structures with the latter system exhibiting higher complexity.

Reflex vs. Instinct

In the previous post I've defined reflex and gave some examples of it in the newborns. I've also said that heritable reactions can be further subdivided into reflexes and instincts. While the concept of reflex is now tractable, the concept of instinct demands further explanation.

Generally, people think of the instincts as the more-complex forms of the heritable behavior. Some scientists claim that one must view instincts as a complex or chain-reaction-like reflex. By that one means a certain kind of connection between the chain of reflexes whereby the response part of one reflex serves as an irritant for the next reflex. Then an insignificant impulse from the outside or some irritant can cause a complex sequence of actions and behaviors, connected among each other in such a way that every activity/action will automatically cause the next one to occur. Not unlike the dominos falling or a trigger wave in bistable or excitable media.

Such view, however, appears to be inadequate. First of all, it suggests that instinct exists in strongly-bounded and exact connection with the elements of the environment. Reflex is a unique, well defined and deterministic connection with the environment. On the contrary, instinct connection is less determined and freer.

Young squirrels, separated from their mothers from birth and always kept in a room (never being outside, never seeing the ground or the trees) and fed always by a human hand, during the Fall season begin to develop an instinct of collecting and storing food for the winter. Squirrel buries the nuts in the rug, sofa, armchair or collects them all in the conner of the room. Such conditions rule out the possibility of learning and negate all those elements of the environment that usually precede development of the instinct. Therefore, one must adopt a more extendable and pliable connection between the instinctive reaction and the environment.

Further, instinctual actions can never be divined and considered, completely, ahead of time; never forming an exact pattern and vary from instance to instance.

Thirdly, the uniqueness of the instinct is contained in the large complexity of the performed actions. While reflex, typically, causes activity of one organ; instinct, typically, causes a large number of cooperating activities of various organs. In other words, it's fair to say that reflex represents a reaction of one organ while instinct represents a reaction (behavior) of the whole organism.

To illustrate the distinction between the instinct and the reflex it's illuminating to look at the mating behavior of the headless flies. Headless flies are capable of mating but only under the condition of one headless fly and one normal fly. All the actions performed before the connection, which can not be considered and predicted ahead of time and that involve participation of various organs, are performed by the normal fly. But the actual act of mating even the headless fly is capable of performing. In this instance, experimental observations differentiate the behavior into reflexorial and instinctual forms. All the actions performed prior to connection must be attributed to the instinctual behavior tied to the workings of the head(nervous) centers. While the actual act of connection ends up being a simple reflex, not requiring the participation of the head(nervous) centers.

Reactions

The basic elements which comprise the entire behavior of an animal or human being, in simplest and complex forms, is sometimes called - 'reactions'. In psychology reaction is the response of an organism instigated by an irritant or stimulus. It is generally assumed that our every behavior is preceded by its cause or reason in a form of either outside factors, events, internal wants/tensions, thoughts etc. All these motives of behavior will be irritants of our reactions. So to that extent one can understand reaction to be a known connection between an organism and its surrounding environment. It's worthy to point out that reactions are not unique to animals and humans (where sometimes reactions can be confused with reflexes) rather it's a much more general concept applying equally to those animals lacking nervous systems, plants, bacteria etc.

Any reaction, starting from the simplest forms in the simplest of organisms to the very complex forms found in the conscious acts of human beings, will always include three essential moments. First - reception of some irritants from the outside environment (sensorial). Followed by the second moment of conversion (informational digestion :) ) of the incoming irritant within the inner processes of an organism, stimulating activity. Finally, third moment, is a response activity (mostly in the form of a movement) developed as a result of the inner processes. This third moment is sometimes called motorial. Second moment is intimately connected to the functioning of the central nervous system and, as a result, sometimes referred to as 'central'. These three moments - sensorial, central and motorial or irritant reception, its conversion (digestion) and response activity - are necessarily present in any reaction.

Examples are abundant: heliotropism (orientation of the plant towards the sun as they grow), moth flying towards the light, dog salivating in response to the meat placed in its mouth, or human, upon hearing the door bell proceeds to opening the door - in all these instances its simple to see the existence of all three moments of a reaction. Note, that it is not always easy (as in examples above) to identify clearly all three moments of a reaction, especially in the complex forms of the human behavior, but according to the model even the most complex reactions follow the same outline as the simple reactions dictated by the three moments.

One word on the distinction between reaction and reflex. As said before reaction is a more general concept of which reflex is a particular instance. In animals possessing the central nervous system (CNS) reactions often take the form of a reflex. In fact, reflex is nothing more then a reaction of animal's nervous system. Thus, reflex is a narrow physiological concept; reaction is a wider biological concept. Reflex are absent in plants or animals not having the CNS yet one can still talk about reactions. Finally, it is not at all obvious (and there are evidence to support this) that there do not exist, in humans, reactions which are not related to the reflexory process rather then those that emerge as a consequence of chemical irritation/stimulation of the CNS from within.

Even the most basic observation of the human and animal behavior allows one to differentiate between reactions of various, distinct originations.

Some of reactions are what could be termed - heritable or congenital - and are given to a child either in the first moments of birth or form during the process of growth without any learning, studying, memorizing or external influences. Examples of heritable reactions are abundant in the newborns: crying reflex, swallowing, sucking etc, are noticeable in the first hours following the birth and remain, for the most part, unchanged throughout the life. These heritable forms of behavior can be further subdivided into reflexes and instincts.

Other reactions, per contra, form during the process of personal experience (various points in life) and come not from the inherited organization but, instead, originate as a result of the uniqueness of an individual's experience. Call these - acquired reactions.

In heritable reactions, forms of behavior, there is a lot of commonality between the animals and the human beings. On the contrary, acquired reactions are quiet distinct depending on the historical, geographical, gender based, social class and individual uniquenesses.

Following Majority

At the beginning of fifties a report was published in the United States about an experiment performed more than fifty times by the social psychologist Solomon Asch. Volunteers had to estimate the length of various lines as a ratio to a reference line. It was an easy task - or so it appeared at first glance - because the line in agreement could be readily identified. Eight to nine persons participated in the experiment, which proceeded as follows: as soon as the three comparison lines were suspended next to the reference line, each person, in the sequence from left to right, indicated which of the three lines corresponded in his or her opinion to the reference line. Each experiment had to performed twelve times, with twelve repetitions.

The following test was now carried out: after all the volunteers had agreed on the correct line during the first two runs, the experimenter changed the situation. His assistants, who knew the purpose of the experiment, all indicated too short a line as being in agreement with the reference line. The behavior of a naive volunteer, the only person unaware, who sat at the end of the row, was now examined under the the pressure of a dominant different opinion. Would he begin to waver? Would he agree with the majority verdict, no matter how much it contradicted his own? Or would he uphold his own judgement?

Results: of ten volunteers, two could not be persuaded to change their minds; two agreed only once or twice during ten test runs, but six out of ten indicated several times the obviously wrong minority view as their own. From this one might conclude that even in the harmless question and in a rather indifferent situation that does not affect their real interest most people follow the opinion of the majority even when they can have no doubt that it is incorrect.