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.

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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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OSCILLATION 2)

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A more or less periodic change of the values of a function in a system.

Oscillations can be: regularly sinusoidal; of relaxation; periodic but complex (i.e. composed of various sinusoidal oscillations of different frequencies and amplitudes); mixed chaotic and periodic, or totally chaotic. (I. PRIGOGINE, 1984, p.55)

In dynamic equilibrium conditions, they are generally steady or progressively damped. Far- from- equilibrium, they become amplifying fluctuations and finally lead the system over an instability threshold. This in turn is conducive either to its destruction or to its emergence at a higher level of structural and functional complexity.

The homogeneous steady state could be considered as non-oscillatory.

Oscillations can be an effect of time lags.

This has been demonstrated long ago by VOLTERRA and LOTKA's study of the population's fluctuations.

More recently, it is a characteristic feature of J. FORRESTER's Systems Dynamics.

This is quite understandable, as the corrective action of any regulator is always late: its impact is felt on the controlled value when other variations already changed the value's level.

P. MANZELLI states (with reference to biochemical processes): "… oscillating reactions show an auto-organized action that needs the supposition that the interacting particles can "communicate information" among themselves to establish a global behavior of the space/time transformation of the reaction" (1993, p.334).

This process results generally of intricate sets of feedbacks, as in catalysis or hypercycles.

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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