PRIVATE AND PUBLIC CODES IN LIVING SYSTEMS THEORY

摘要

An extremely important, but often unheralded, contribution in Living Systems Theory isrnthe explication of internal coding and data transformation within a system, particularly recodingrnfrom “public” to “private” information, and vice versa. The analysis of suchrninternal coding is somewhat neglected even within General Systems Theory, and almostrntotally neglected by the general public, which has surprisingly little awareness of itsrnimportance, or even its existence. The importance of such coding and re-coding inrnsystems has received increased visibility recently through the development of “PublicrnKey Infrastructure” (PKI) technology for Internet security. PKI technology routinelyrnuses the concepts of a public key and a private key (similar to the notions of public andrnprivate codes). The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of the subsystems of LSTrnin dealing with private and public codes. The paper distinguishes between seven primaryrnsubsystems, which have an active role in the maintenance of private and public codes,rnand thirteen secondary subsystems, which have a support role. The primary subsystemsrnare the boundary, converter, the two re-coding subsystems (the decoder and encoder) andrnthe three transducers (the input transducer, internal transducer, and output transducer).rnThe relevance of private and public codes to autopoiesis and Luhmann’s theory ofrndichotomies is also discussed. It is shown that private and public codes play a centralrnrole not only in the obvious function of providing system security, but also in the lessrnobvious function of providing group identity.