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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NETWORK (Random) 2)

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It has been defined as a network in which all nodes have about the same number of links. However, G. PASK quite to the point, wrote as early as 1961: "I do not condone a lot of loose talk about 'random networks'. Random network should mean a very definite initial structure determined by a random number table, presumably because the initial structure does not affect those features of behaviour that interest us, providing the behaviour is averaged over an ensemble of artifacts" (1961, p.84).

A fully random network should not present any constraint at all and thus be totally unpredictable, even in the statistical sense of a Markovian system. Such a network could not learn, not lead to any organizational closure… and, after all, could not be a network at all.

Practically however, randomness is always framed within some determining constraints.

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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