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

DISORDER 1)2)

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A general state of lack of coordination between elements.

It would possibly be better to create a neologism for such a state, for example "unorder", because in common language, disorder really means "seriously altered order"

It is obviously in such a dubious way that R. FIVAZ understands disorder when he defines it as an "arbitrary arrangement in time, space, velocity or other dimension of positions of elements in a system: the arrangement is such that positions in any part of the system cannot be predicted from the knowledge of positions in any other part" (1991, p.31).

It seems however clear that "arrangement" and "disorder" are compatible terms only if disorder is not total.

In accordance with thermodynamic laws, disorder means "a completely featureless distribution of elements ", which corresponds to the state of maximum entropy, and random distribution and movements of the elements.

This is a generally final situation and, in case of systems the "end of the road ". As St. BEER once said: "Death is equifinal".

As in a disordered state, no constraints exist, or in other terms no algorithmic compression is possible, the quantity of information that would be needed to describe it is maxi mum. This is the reason (questioned by some authors) why information is many times quoted as corresponding with so-called "negentropy".

Chaos theory introduces the understanding of a different kind of disorder: the general unpredictability resulting from complex dynamics.

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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