Function and Functional Object

Written with participation of Igor Katrychek katrichek@gmail.com

Man and all living beings use the environment for their own purposes. It is believed that by constructing the paradigm of objects and, considering the objects created by him through the prism of their utility, man has achieved in this greater perfection than animals. For example, having polished a copper plate to a mirror shine, a person uses the property of an object created by him to reflect light and calls this plate a mirror. Such an attitude towards the environment gives rise to the separation of objects into useful, harmful and worthless. Whether animals have created a paradigm of objects, or they have their own paradigm, different from us, we do not know, we cannot ask.

In fact, all objects are parts of our environment. There is no difference between an airplane and a stone. There is no difference between the objects in the creation of which the person accepted and those in the creation of which he did not participate. In order not to waste time on useless disputes about the degree of human participation in the creation of certain objects, I propose not to distinguish between them.

Concept of function

Any object can be given a function. For example, knowing those flows that disappear in the body of an object, and those flows that form in it, we can say that the function of the object is the conversion of incoming flows into outgoing flows (for example, the mirror has a function of reflecting incident light). We can give an object the function of being ourselves. And then the function of an object is the flow of its states (for example, the function of a picture is to demonstrate itself). True, we do not take into account all the flows and not all the states, but only those that are either desirable or necessary from our point of view, for example, to explain the reasons for their occurrence.

Such a description, in which we are focused only on the desired and necessary flows of matter, energy and states, we call a function.

It is believed that the function is associated only with the flow of energy or matter. But such an idea of ​​a function says nothing about the desired or necessary state flow. Therefore, I believe that the definition of a function should be supplemented with the desired stream of states. The definition of a function does not specify whether it has a flux transformation, or just their emission and absorption. It is clear that the conversion is not radiation. You can try to investigate this question with the help of examples. For example, the function of the music center is to play music. There is nothing in this definition about streaming. That is why I will insist that the function is not related to the conversion of flows, but there is only their absorption and emission.

The subjectivity of the function

Since desires and necessities for each subject are individual, the idea of ​​the desired and necessary flows is also subjective. Therefore, it is very important to remember that the function is always subjective. It reflects the subjective view of the world. Two subjects, looking at the same object, can draw different conclusions about its functional purpose.

It is this subjectivity in the definition of a function that made system engineering divide objects into those that nature created and into those that man created. Allegedly, those that man did have a function, and those created by nature do not have it. There are two objections to this:

1. We can endow natural objects with functions. For example, the function of a boulder is to keep the slope from breaking
2. The same object for different subjects can perform different functions.

Therefore, such a division is doomed to failure. There is no difference between the objects; there is a difference in the interpretation of the flows associated with these objects.

The relationship between the object and the function

Studying flows, we build objects. As I wrote earlier , the streams are primary, the objects built on their basis are secondary. Therefore, we can investigate flows without building objects. We only limit those areas of space in which absorption, emission, transmission of flows occurs. Next, we apply to these areas our idea of ​​the desired and necessary flows. So functions are born that are not related to objects. In such an interpretation, a function is an area of ​​space in which absorption, emission or transfer of the desired flows occur, as well as flows that can explain these absorption, emission or transfer. I note that for such an approach, the construction of a stream of states is impossible, since there is no selected object.

We can build an object and think about what it is intended for. Then we can look at the flows that are absorbed and emitted in his body or from its surface, we can look at the flow of its states. If these flows may seem useful or necessary to us, we create in our imagination a function that is associated with this object. This is how the concept of an object and its function is born.

We can cease to be passive observers and become active participants in the creation of new objects with given functional properties. This allows you not to wait and not to look for an object with the specified properties, but to have it by the specified date in a certain place. But these objects, I repeat, are as much a part of nature as everyone else.

The concept of a functional object

In the case of a function without an object, we can try to construct an object associated with it. This is how the idea of ​​functional objects is born. For example, let there is a conversion of electricity from 110 sq. To 10 sq. M. This is a description of two streams - one incoming and one outgoing. We can localize the space in which these streams are transformed. This space is called a voltage transformer. It will be a functional object, because it doesn’t matter to us how the transformation takes place, whether there is a piece of iron there, or if the transformation takes place in a different way, but as long as there are threads, we know that there is something there. And this is something we call a functional object. A functional object is no different from a physical one. Simply, creating these or other objects, we focus our attention on various aspects of existence.

Continued: Comparative analysis of physical and functional objects