Adaptation
How a system modifies itself in response to changes — adjusting structure or behavior to maintain functionality or improve fitness within its environment.
Formal Definitions
Mobus & Kalton (2015):
“Environments have a tendency to change on longer time scales than that of the overt behavior of the SOI. This is the basis for the SOI to change (its composition and behavior) to remain in compliance with the new(er) requirements. This is what adaptation and evolution are about.”
(Principles of Systems Science, Section 3.4.2.2.1)
“Living and supra-living systems (e.g., organizations) are certainly purposeful in doing what they have to in order to stay alive (operate) and procreate (profit/grow). They are adaptive and evolvable systems that can reconfigure their internals to meet new challenges.”
(Section 3.4.2.2.1)
Principle 6:
“Systems evolve to accommodate long-term changes in their environments.”
(Section 2.3)
Bunge (1979): Bunge addresses adaptation through emergence and functional change:
“Emergent properties are ones that are new for a system at a time step.”
(A World of Systems, p. 29, Chapter 1)
Adaptation produces temporally novel properties — the system becomes capable of something it wasn’t before.
Synthesis
Mobus defines adaptation as systemic reconfiguration to maintain compliance with changing environmental requirements. Bunge captures it through temporal emergence — new capabilities appearing over time. Mobus emphasizes the mechanism (reconfiguration); Bunge emphasizes the outcome (novelty).
Key Insight
Adaptation operates on slower timescales than normal system behavior. A thermostat regulates temperature moment-to-moment (feedback); adaptation is when the organism develops better heat tolerance over generations or learns new strategies within a lifetime.
Explore Further
- Plastic adaptive systems — Stability through flexibility
Related Concepts
- Feedback Loop — short-term regulation
- Emergence — adaptation produces emergent capabilities
- Environment — what systems adapt to