>From: "Andrew Gunner" <andrewg@netspace.net.au>
>To: <PCP@vub.ac.be>
>Subject: Query about feedback
>Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 22:29:55 +1100
>X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
>Importance: Normal
>
>
>
>Hello
>
>I have worked as a problem gambling counsellor for four years - and I am
>doing a masters degree by research into the nature of problem gambling.
>
>Is there some way in which I can post this question onto the PCP mailing
>list
>
>I am taking a systems approach to problem gambling and looking at how the
>pattern of organization of problem gambling could be presented as a system
>of feedback loops - including several critical deviation amplifying feedback
>loops.
>
>I have been influenced by many authors including:
>· Capra, “The Web of Life”
>· Gleick “Chaos”, and
>· Maruyama “The Second Cybernetics: Deviation Amplifying Mutual Causal
>Processes”
>
>I want to find a reference that discusses and classifies feedback systems.
>Maruyama and Capra cover two forms of feedback loop: (a) amplifying and (b)
>damping feedback. Lyn Hoffmann presents Bateson's ideas of symmetrical and
>complementary relationships as two forms of amplifying feedback loop. I find
>myself asking questions that I hope others have sorted out and presented.
>For example,
>
>Reversible and irreversible feedback loops
>Maruyama presents the example of the weathering of rock as an example of
>amplifying feedback, i.e. water gathering in an indentation freezing and
>cracking the rock enabling more water to gather the next time. This process
>is clearly not reversible. While an increase in the water gathering causes
>an increase in cracking, reduced water gathering cannot reverse the cracking
>of the rock. Has some author discussed the reversibility of feedback
>processes?
>
>Other categories of feedback loop
>Are there other relevant categories of feedback loops? Has some author
>written about categories of feedback processes?
>
>Modelling of systems using feedback loops
>As I write it occurs to me that perhaps the aspect of the system that needs
>to be in the feedback loop is the rate of cracking. An increase in water
>gathering would cause increased rate of cracking and a decrease in water
>gathering would cause a decrease in the rate of cracking. Has some author
>discussed the modelling of systems using feedback?
>
>I have scanned the engineering library, but most of these texts seem to
>focus on control theory – deviation-damping feedback. I found Mees (1981)
>“The Dynamics of feedback systems”. This may be useful, I am still to read
>it further.
>
>Thanks
>
>Andrew Gunner
>Melbourne Australia
_________________________________________________________________________
Francis Heylighen <fheyligh@vub.ac.be> -- Center "Leo Apostel"
Free University of Brussels, Krijgskundestr. 33, 1160 Brussels, Belgium
tel +32-2-6442677; fax +32-2-6440744; http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
========================================
Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from Francis Heylighen <fheyligh@vub.ac.be>
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