BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

ACTIVITY of a SYSTEM 1)2)

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"The ensemble of the variations in time of all the quantities under consideration at the given resolution level" (G. KLIR, 1965, p.30).

G. KLIR points out: "The time interval of the activity is either the entire interval during which we observed the relevant quantities (in the experimental investigation of the system), or the interval in which the variations in time are given and are to be realized" (Ibid).

The distinction between levels – for instance micro-, macro-, or megascopic – corresponds to the fact that actions very limited in space and/or time (in relation to the defined observation level) are generally not significant at a higher level, because they normally lack the sufficient range to have an impact on processes of considerably greater amplitude and/or much longer frequency. It may however be difficult to be sure that any action or event at a given level is not going to make a great difference, as in chaotic phenomena.

Indeed, in the proximity of an instability threshold, a quite small action even at a lower level can trigger a decisive discontinuity or bifurcation.

These quite abstract models can seemingly be observed in concrete systems, for instance in some ants societies where distributed processes of task allocations by roles switching have been discovered by D.M GORDON (1995, p.50-7) This seems to take place by a reciprocal and collective needs assessment leading to the global activity of the system.

→ "constructs (synchronous)"

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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