The evolution of anticipation : a systemic holistic view

The main challenge of systems science is to elaborate a general transdisciplinary langage pertinent not only to describe and interpret systems of different natures physical, chemical, biological, social, cognitive, but also to understand their dynamics over a wide time scale, from their emergence, to their evolution toward complexity and autonomy. In this paper we present the main features of a metamodel that has been proposed recently in this context. We then use this language to investigate the evolution of the anticipative behavior of natural systems through the different stages of self-organization, self-regulation, autopoiesis, self-reference and autonomy. We show that their anticipative behavior begins with the first modes of circular causality, reaches a sort of apex with the anticipation capability of cognitive systems (like human beings), and then becomes irrelevant and meaningless with strictly autonomous systems which are identical with both their physical structure and their virtual possibles.