# The Fly as Control System

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-fly-as-control-system/11288>\
**Category:** CSG1995\
**Created:** [May 26, 1995, 5:57pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-fly-as-control-system/11288 "1995-05-26T17:57:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bruce_Abbott)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 1995, 5:57pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-fly-as-control-system/11288/1 "1995-05-26T17:57:06Z")

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[From Bruce Abbott (950526.1255 EST)]

Vincent Dethier (quoted below) seems to have the right idea:

The blowfly (Phormia regina) like all species of life, is a temporary form  
through which flows energy and matter, the matter becoming, for a while, fly  
and then passing on. The fly is just another way to reverse entropy on this  
planet, to defy, apparently, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is  
another way to build orderly complexity in a system characterized by  
increasing disorder and randomness. . . .

Animals are improbable accretions of matter. Real species are every bit as  
improbable as are the figments of diseased minds or of the imagination of a  
Hieronymus Bosch or Dali or Escher. The fly is a most improbable beast. . . .

Although the fly and the vertebrate differ in their organization, their  
goals are the same. Living things are circumscribed cosmoses, designs for  
utopias where constancy is the goal. The machinery of life operates best  
under constant conditions. The limits of tolerance are narrow. Existing in  
a greater world where change is the rule, the minimum constant challenge is  
to maintain the status quo in the midst of change; the maximum challenge is  
to exercise autonomous change independently of or even in opposition to  
change in the wider outside world. These islands of balancing constancy  
that are organisms, man, the fly in his chitinous box, win their utopias  
only at cost. Energy is required to maintain temperature stability, to keep  
water balance, to drive locomotion (which is necessary to exploit new  
sources of energy when the immediate source is depleted), and to find other  
flies to make more flies. And energy is required to run the machinery  
designed to process and utilize energy. The cycle closes upon itself. The  
primary immediate goal is eating. To this end are so many of the ambitions  
of men and the activities of flies directed.

&nbsp;&nbsp;Dethier, V. G. (1976). \_The hungry fly\_. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, Pp. 1-3.

Regards,

Bruce