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

BROWNIAN MOTION 3)5)

The random motion at microscopic level of particles suspended in a liquid or a gas.

As stated by P. DAVIES: "Brownian motion is the archetypical, random unpredictable process. Yet, so the argument ran, if we could follow in detail the activities of all the individual molecules involved, Brownian motion would be every bit as predictable and deterministic as clockwork. The apparent random motion of the Brownian particle is attributed solely to the lack of information about the myriads of participating molecules, arising from the fact that our senses are too coarse to permit detailed observation at the molecular level" (1990, p.49).

However: "Two major developments of the 20th century have… put paid to the idea of a clockwork universe" (Ibid).

The first was quantum mechanics which introduced indeterminacy at the physical microlevel as well as in relation to our possibility of observation. And the second one is chaos which, while still somehow deterministic, rapidly makes even very simple simple systems fairly unpredictable.

Thus, determinism cannot be polarly opposed to randomness, nor is unpredictability simply a result of our imperfect perceptions.

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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