| Abstract | Current theorizing in movement control explains order and regulation in terms of central programs or the reference levels of closed-loop servomechanisms. Specifically, the order and regulation observed results from a priori prescriptions, and the devices responsible are conceptually separate from that which they regulate. Neither theory adequately addresses how the free variables of the system are regulated (Bernstein’s [1967] degrees of freedom problem). In the alternative perspective, promoted here, order and regulation are seen as a posterior emergent consequences of the dynamical behavior of the system. In this view, solutions to the degrees of freedom problem may lei in the principles of Iberall’s (1977) Homeokinetic Physics, which characterized biological systems as ensembles of nonlinear, limit cycle oscillators, coupled and mutually entrained at all levels. Homeokinetics provides a secure basis for recent developments in neuroscience and offers an alternative rationale for some relevant facts in movement control and coordination. |
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