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

NOISE 1)

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A random non-rhythmic disturbance in a communication channel" (J.Z. YOUNG, 1978, p. 296)

"The perturbing part in a temporal signal" (R. VALLÉE, 1992).

or, with more detail: An environmental disturbance which reduces the reliability of the message transmitted through the communication channel.

VALLÉE's definition gives the general sense of the term, not merely the technical one.

The noise is the part of the signal which is not understood, or seems still senseless. VALLÉE states that the complete signal is the sum of its significant and non-significant parts.

About the concept of "order from noise", he writes: "Noise does not create order, but it is an excellent developer (in the photographic sense) of structure… It can also, through the fluctuations that it provokes, become a "structure trigger" (Ibid).

This is nucleation in conditions of dissipative structuration.

Other interesting comments about noise are:

"All that is not information, not redundancy, not form and not restraint – is noise, the only possible source of new patterns" (G. BATESON, 1973, p.386)

"… in my restaurant, self-organizing systems do not only feed upon order: they will also find noise on the menu" (H.von FOERSTER, 1981, p.15).

"It is not bad to have noise in the system. If a system freezes in a specific state, it cannot anymore adapt, while this final state may easily be faulty and it will not be able to adapt to anything that would be an inadequate situation" (H. ATLAN, 1972, p.24, quoting von FOERSTER, 1960, p. 31-50)

According to C. ZIMMER (1999, p. 86) "nonlinear dynamics seems to amplify noise" Apparently, the significance of noise is deeply modified in deterministic chaos.

It becomes either enhancing and constructive, or on the contrary destructive, in particular in relation to some peculiar conjunction of environmental conditions acting as amplificator or 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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