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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MODELS (Qualitative Analysis of) 2)3)

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J. ARACIL seeks a way out of limited quantitative analysis of dynamical nonlinear systems and proposes the following method: "… when a nonlinear dynamical system is analyzed, before adapting a quantitative criterion relative to a behavior mode (attractor) is it convenient to study the full class of behavior modes that the system can show. That is, before trying to make a trajectory generated by µ fit some observations on ´, it should be analyzed if all the behavior modes that can show µ correspond to the ones that show ´. This is the purpose of the qualitative analysis of µ.

"To carry out this analysis we use the phase portrait of µ, in which the attractor's structure of the model µ is shown. Associated with every attractor there is a basin of attraction. The basins are enclosed by separatrixes. The state space is partitioned in the set of basins. The phase portrait supplies an overall view of all the behavior modes the system can show." (1986, p.245)

ARACIL bases his qualitative analysis on THOM's elementary catastrophes, taking in account situations characterized by two alternating attractors. It should be interesting to study what happens when the system undergoes a process of dissipative structuration: this is obviously the case of numerous concrete systems, especially complex ecological, economic, business and social systems.

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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