The maintenance of life requires a steady-state internal environment that must be held relatively constant within carefully prescribed limits. Feedback control mechanisms that provide this type of restraint work through homeostatic regulators that transmit information through a corresponding syntax that is uniquely their own. The language is coded into electromagnetic information that is of a reference nature (genetic, adaptive or conditioned), sensory (informative) or motor (causative), and which is transmitted as action potentials that have a functional dependence on the error signal and a parametric dependence on the disturbing signal. The analysis of homeostasis within the context of feedback control theory reduces seemingly complex, unrelated sequences of physiologic processes into more readily identifiable sets of common denominators that illucidate some basic principles of biologic function. Appropriate interpretation of these biologic principles may help us move closer to success in our efforts to improve the health, comfort and understanding of man. This is because the specific details of complex physiologic processes may be viewed as simply special cases (or different sets of boundary conditions) of a unified guiding theory.
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