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

UNIVERSE, from LAPLACE to chaos 3)

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The French mathematician and astronomer P.de LAPLACE proposed a "clockwork" model of the universe through the hypothesis according to which "one who should know the positions and movements of all the bodies of the universe at one instant, would be able to predict their positions at any moment of the future". This view seemed indeed strongly confirmed by some spectacular astronomical discoveries during the 19th century based on this type of deterministic calculus.

However, POINCARÉ showed in 1889 that some quite simple astronomical problems (the famous three bodies problem) could not be rigorously solved.

This was the starting point of chaos theory. In P DAVIES words:… even one such chaotic system would rapidly exhaust the entire Universe's capacity to compute its behavior. It seems then, that the Universe is incapable of digitally computing the future behavior of even a small part of itself, let alone all of itself. Expressed more dramatically, the Universe is its own fastest simulator" (1990). R. JENSEN expressed the same idea (see hereafter).

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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