The term
adaptation arises mainly in the biological scope as a trial to study the relationship between the characteristics (anatomic structure, physiological processes or behavior) of living beings and their environments. Currently, in
biologyBiology is the natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy...
, the term
adaptation has a clear and concise meaning: a biological
adaptation is an anatomic structure, a physiological process or a behavior's trait of an organism that has been selected by the natural
evolutionIn biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...
in such a way that this characteristic increase the probability of reproduction of an organism.
An
adaptive system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole that together are able to respond to environmental changes or changes in the interacting parts.
The term
adaptation arises mainly in the biological scope as a trial to study the relationship between the characteristics (anatomic structure, physiological processes or behavior) of living beings and their environments. Currently, in
biologyBiology is the natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy...
, the term
adaptation has a clear and concise meaning: a biological
adaptation is an anatomic structure, a physiological process or a behavior's trait of an organism that has been selected by the natural
evolutionIn biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...
in such a way that this characteristic increase the probability of reproduction of an organism.
An
adaptive system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole that together are able to respond to environmental changes or changes in the interacting parts. Feedback loops represent a key feature of adaptive systems, allowing the response to changes; examples of adaptive systems include: natural ecosystems, individual organisms, human communities, human organizations, and human families.
Some artificial systems can be adaptive as well; for instance, robots employ
control systemA control system is a device or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or systems.There are two common classes of control systems, with many variations and combinations: logic or sequential controls, and feedback or linear controls...
s that utilize feedback loops to sense new conditions in their environment and adapt accordingly.
The Law of Adaptation
Every adaptive system converges to a state in which all kind of stimulation ceases.
A formal definition of the Law of Adaptation is as follows:
Given a system , we say that a physical event is a stimulus for the system if and only if the probability that the system suffers a change or be perturbed (in its elements or in its processes) when the event occurs is strictly greater than the prior probability that suffers a change independently of :
Let be an arbitrary system subject to changes in time and let be an arbitrary event that is a stimulus for the system : we say that is an adaptive system if and only if when t tends to infinity the probability that the system change its behavior in a time step given the event is equal to the probability that the system change its behavior independently of the occurrence of the event . In mathematical terms:
1-
2-
Thus, for each instant will exist a temporal interval such that:
Benefit of Self-Adjusting Systems
In an adaptive system, a parameter changes slowly and has no preferred value. In a self-adjusting system though, the parameter value “depends on the history of the system dynamics”. One of the most important qualities of self-adjusting systems is its “adaption to the edge of chaos” or ability to avoid chaos. Practically speaking, by heading to the edge of chaos without going further, a leader may act spontaneously yet without disaster. A March/April 2009 Complexity article further explains the self-adjusting systems used and the realistic implications.[
http://www.comdig.org/send_article.php?id_article=32227
]
See also
- Adaptive immune system
The adaptive immune system is composed of highly specialized, systemic cells and processes that eliminate or prevent pathogenic challenges. Thought to have arisen in the first jawed vertebrates, the adaptive or "specific" immune system is activated by the “non-specific” and evolutionarily older...
- Artificial neural network
An artificial neural network , usually called "neural network" , is a mathematical model or computational model that tries to simulate the structure and/or functional aspects of biological neural networks. It consists of an interconnected group of artificial neurons and processes information using...
- Complex adaptive system
Complex adaptive systems are special cases of complex systems. They are complex in that they are diverse and made up of multiple interconnected elements and adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience...
- Diffusion of innovations
Diffusion of Innovations is a theory of how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. The concept was first studied by the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde and by German and Austrian anthropologists such as Friedrich Ratzel or Leo Frobenius . Its basic...
- Ecosystems
- Neural adaptation
Neural adaptation or sensory adaptation is a change over time in the responsiveness of the sensory system to a constant stimulus. It is usually experienced as a change in the stimulus. For example, if one rests one's hand on a table, one immediately feels the table's surface on one's skin. Within a...
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