Spontaneous Interentity Coordination in a Dissipative Structure |
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Authors: | Tehran J Davis Bruce A Kay Dilip Kondepudi |
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Institution: | 1. Center for the Ecological Study of Perception &2. Action, University of Connecticut;3. Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut;4. Department of Chemistry, Wake Forest University |
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Abstract: | Humans and other creatures display remarkable interorganism coordination. For ecological theorists, interorganism coordination poses a challenge because it appears to be an especially “representation-hungry” phenomenon (Clark, 1999 Clark, A. (1999). An embodied cognitive science? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 345–351.Crossref], PubMed], Web of Science ®] , Google Scholar]). Ecological researchers have proposed that interorganism coordination arises from fundamental laws of pattern formation and synchronization. A key example in support of the ecological approach to coordination is the phase locking of 2 or more weakly coupled metronomes. Here we provide a complementary example of interentity coordination in a system that is more closely analogous to living systems. We show that two self-organizing dissipative structures, coupled in a single electrical field, spontaneously exhibit fairly complex motion coordination. Further, the degree of coordination predicts the rate of entropy production for the system as a whole. We suggest that the complex behavior of motion coordination fulfills a rudimentary end-directedness of the system: evolve to states that create higher rates of entropy production. |
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