Ladyman, James and Thebault, Karim P Y
(2024)
Open Systems and Autonomy.
[Preprint]
Abstract
This paper designs and defends a conceptual framework for the disambiguation of scientific language regarding open and closed systems. We argue that the open-closed distinction should always be precisifed by specifying a characteristic quantity that is conserved if and only if the system is closed. Open systems are those for which conservation of the characteristic quantity fails. This precisification is in accord with much but not all existing practice. We show that an open system can have well-posed autonomous dynamics and need not be embeddable in any larger system. We distinguish two kinds of autonomy and show that they dissociate from the open-closed distinction. We argue that this framework clears the path towards a new approach to the modelling of autonomous open systems in quantum physics and cosmology.
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