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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BASIN OF ATTRACTION 1)2)

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The region that includes all the trajectories corresponding to an attractor in a system's dynamics.

A specific basin corresponds to each attractor.

The global state space consists of a set of basins, that are isolated from each other by separatrixes. In the neighborhood of a saddle, basins limits become unstable, and a trajectory can jump from one basin to another (A catastrophe event).

This abstract concept can be intuitively visualized through the example of a river basin, in which flows circulate in a structured space. The general character of a basin implies, in K. KRIPPENDORFF's words:"… that no state in one basin succeeds or is succeeded by states in another basin and any two states in one basin share at least one preceeding state or successor" (1986, p.5-6). Every basin thus defines some specific dynamics, and inhibits any other.

To different kinds of attractors correspond different types of basins.

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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