---
slug: paper-odum-h-t-1988-self-organization-transformity-and-information-science-242-1132-11
title: Odum on Self-Organization, Transformity, and Information (1988)
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-odum-h-t-1988-self-organization-transformity-and-information-science-242-1132-11
---

## What the subject saw and its core results

Howard T. Odum examined closed aquarium ecosystems and larger ecological systems. He observed that self-organization produces designs maximizing energy throughput. Systems pulse between production and consumption. Feedbacks reinforce pathways that use more available energy.

Core result: energy hierarchies form naturally. Lower-quality energy transforms into higher-quality energy in smaller quantities. Transformity measures this quality as solar emjoules per joule. Sunlight starts at one. Organic matter reaches thousands. Shared information reaches trillions.

Odum linked this to information. Information persists successful designs across energy fluctuations. It copies, tests, and selects better configurations.

## Exact primary works and passages

Primary work: Odum, H.T. (1988). Self-organization, transformity and information. Science 242:1132–1139.

Verifiable passages from the paper:

"Ecosystems and other self-organizing systems develop system designs and mathematics that reinforce energy use, characteristically with alternate pulsing of production and consumption."

"If designs keep changing during self-organization until maximum performance designs are reached, then self-organizing systems can be said to..."

"The geobiosphere builds and maintains structural storages with productive work…When inputs decrease, nonliving structures dissipate, and later if energy inputs are again available, self-organization has to start over. With information the products of self-organization carry over from one episode of growth to another, making life, progress, and evolution possible."

"To keep information functional, a system is required to make more copies than needed, test each functionally, discard the erroneous and ill-adapted copies, and use the ones that make the system perform best for future copying."

"Solar transformities in the biosphere, expressed as solar emjoules per joule, range from one for solar insolation to trillions for categories of shared information."

## Convergence patterns it evidences

The paper shows energy flows produce branching hierarchies and flow networks. It identifies memory through information storage that survives dissipation. It notes scale invariance in energy transformation ratios across levels. It describes bounded self-organization in open dissipative systems.

These match GRAIN patterns of branching, flow networks, memory, and scale invariance. The work traces difference (energy gradients) to structure (hierarchies) to memory (information persistence).

It supports the Ladder by placing information at higher transformity levels that control lower flows, approaching mind-like properties in complex systems.

## Distance from the full synthesis

Odum reaches structure and memory stages. He stops short of explicit life-to-mind transitions or the Mirror Layer where the observer sits inside the observed system. The paper treats information as functional control rather than reflexive self-description.

It stays mechanistic and empirical. No metaphysical claims appear.

## Honest limits and disconfirming edges

The evidence rests on ecosystem models and simulations. Direct measurement of transformity in non-biological systems remains limited. Reductionist accounts can explain hierarchies via local selection without global maximum empower.

The paper does not address quantum or cosmological scales. It assumes one energy source in simplified diagrams. Real webs contain multiple sources.

Claims here derive from textual attribution only. No new empirical tests are reported.

/a/oip-the-ladder /a/oip-principles
