Abstract
The concept of “ill-defined system” collapses into triviality if it is used to refer to any system that has not yet been well defined. One might take it rather to mean one that can never be understood in a well-defined way. This interpretation, however, invites troublesome disputes over what is to count as “well-defined”, and also prejudges the question of whether human knowledge will ever be adequate to the system concerned. For instance, Schrodinger’s wave-equations are mathematically well-defined, but they concern quantum phenomena which many would regard as a paradigm case of ill-definedness; and though the Copenhagen School believed this ill-definedness to be grounded at the ontological level, Einstein cited his conviction that “God does not play at dice” in interpreting quantum indeterminacy as a merely epistemological matter.
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Boden, M.A. (1984). Failure is Not the Spur. In: Selfridge, O.G., Rissland, E.L., Arbib, M.A. (eds) Adaptive Control of Ill-Defined Systems. NATO Conference Series, vol 16. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8941-5_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8941-5_20
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