ultrastableadj.
/ʌltrəˈsteɪb(ə)l/ Stable against all subsequent disturbances, even those not taken into account in the design of the system.
ΘΚΠ
the world > movement > absence of movement > [adjective] > stable > against all disturbance
ultrastable1952
1952 W. R. Ashby Design for Brain viii. 91 This process is most clearly shown in what I shall call an ultra~stable system: one that is absolute and contains step-functions in a sufficiently large number for us to be able to ignore the finiteness of the number.
1967 R. Whitehead in G. Wills & R. Yearsley Handbk. Managem. Technol. 66 Cybernetics seeks to produce an ultra-stable solution between an organism and its environment.
1970 G. Ordish tr. R. Chauvin World of Ants 203 What do we mean here by the word ‘adaptation’? It should mean a series of successive changes of tactics which only stop, as Ashby says, when the system reaches an ‘ultrastable’ state within the limits set by the physiology of the individuals in question.
1976 Listener 24 June 821/4 Such thought..would itself become an historical system—in the modern jargon, an ‘ultra-stable’ system, one which could take its own corrective action when things went wrong.
Derivatives
ultrastaˈbility n.
ΘΚΠ
the world > movement > absence of movement > [noun] > stability > against all disturbances
ultrastability1952
1952 W. R. Ashby Design for Brain viii. 91 The principle of ultrastability will be stated formally: an ultra~stable system acts selectively towards the fields of the main variables, rejecting those that lead the representative point to a critical state but retaining those that do not.
1967 R. Whitehead in G. Wills & R. Yearsley Handbk. Managem. Technol. 66 If self-regulation and ultra-stability are desirable things..then we must be prepared to learn from the systems that exhibit them.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1986; most recently modified version published online March 2018).
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adj.1952