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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FLOCKING 1)4)5)

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A massive emergent collective behavior among animals and some micro-organisms through which they alineate their movements in ordered patterns.

More generally it is a typical behavior of numerous elements in originally random interaction within a confined space (See M. BUCHANAN, 2000).

Flocking is observed in birds flights, in fish shoals, in some bacteria and seems even to correspond to atoms orientation in magnets.

It has been modelized by C. REYNOLDS through a computer program applied to a number of "creatures" called boids.

REYNOLDS' algorithm imposes them three simple rules:

- Try to match your direction with your neighbours

- Head for their average position

- Don't collide

Flocking appears as an emergent property in such a setting.

It appears to be an adaptive collective condition corresponding to a more efficient global use of energy. As a behavior it leads to the emergence of complex systems at a higher level, in accordance with PRIGOGINE's theorem of minimum entropy production" and HAKEN's so-called slaving principle

T. VICZEK, of Eötvös University, in Budapest, and some American researchers, have developed mathematical models of this quite frequent phenomenon (B. SCHECHTER, 1999, p.30-33)

→ Crowd Physics; Order from Noise; School; Swarm

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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