Steady State Fate

The term Steady State refers to a balanced condition in which a system has recovered from an arbitary perturbation or external influence. Like the surface of a still body of water for instance; throw a rock into a pond and watch the ripples slowly dissapate as the pond surface returns to a flat and energy efficient state of equilibrium. Swing a pendulum and watch it dance with gravity until returning to the same state before you pushed it. These systems have the tendency to behave this way because they exhibit some form of feedback; a crude form of intelligence, a way for a system to check itself against what is occuring within. . .

The term is widely used in electronics to define similar equilibrium states defined by networks of components, most notably containing feedback. But why stop there? Look around, the universe is made up of these systems, big and small, some taking eons to play out.

When you think about it, a steady state is just the most probabalistic state for a system to exist without perturbation. Do such systems exist? Could they ever really attain a Steady State Fate?