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

DETERMINISM, RANDOMNESS AND CHAOS 1)3)

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The chaos concept leads to a deep questioning of the traditional- and absolute- notions of determinism and randomness, whose relation has now become quite blurred. Formerly, in the words of J. GLEICK: "Either deterministic mathematics produced steady behavior, or random external noise produced random behavior. That was the choice.

"In the context of this debate, chaos brought an astonishing message: simple deterministic models could produce what looked like random behavior. The behavior actually had an exquisite fine structure, yet any piece of it seemed indistinguishable from noise" (1987, p.78-79).

Through chaos, randomness seems to become embedded within a broad determinism, or put in the opposite way, in complex systems, a kind of determinism seems to emerge from randomness. Either way, determinism and randomness become closely intertwined.

The embedding is quite clear in the WEIERSTRASS function for example, or in the fractal expressions of chaos.

However, these formalizations are still mathematical models and one may wonder if they fully contain the interrelations between determinism and randomness. For the time being, the subject must remain open.

→ "ergodicity"

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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