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.

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AGGREGATION (DIFFUSION LIMITED)(DLA) 2)

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A fractal aggregation type of model constructed on a computer, that starts with a single seed particle and grows to form a cluster by allowing tiny circular particles to attach themselves, one at a time (After I. STEWART, 1992, p.14).

STEWART explains: "Successive new particles move towards the cluster in a "random walk", a series of random motions in all directions often likened to the motion of a drunkard. Wherever the particles hit, they stuck" (Ibid).

Clusters thus obtained "… offer a "random fractal geometry"… difficult to characterise in analytic terms; that is no one has a way of predicting the pattern that will be generated, short of doing an experiment and observe the result… (However)… surprising regularities emerge from apparently unstructurated DLA clusters" (Ibid).

Furthermore, the observed fractal patterns bear a great similarity with a number of natural forms as in electrodeposition of metals and in the growth of bacterial colonies. Some kind of order, related to fractalization, seems thus to emerge from randomness, and seems to govern the progressive occupation of space under partially undetermined conditions.

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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