the ability to modify internal relationships and/or to influence environmental conditions in the interests of neutralizing actual or potential obstacles to the maintenance of stability. (Young, p. ll0)
The ability of a
system to change its internal
organization or
structure in response to environmental conditions that threaten to disturb a desired
behavior or value of an essential
variable. The changes such systems are capable of are qualitative in the sense of changing the mode of interaction with an environment in steps or jumps, not along a continuum, and they are purposeful because such systems seek a behavior that is disturbance defying. Ultrastability is stability of a logical level higher than the
stability to which a system converges without change of its internal organization or structure. Ashby's
homeostat was the first mechanical demonstration of this form of stability heretofore reserved to living organisms (
see morphogenesis ). (
Krippendorff ) (see
ultrastable system )
