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

ORDER and RANDOMNESS 1)2)3)

← Back

The relation between order and randomness remains still a vexing problem.

While a complex system needs strong constraints to maintain its coherence, these constraints reduce its adaptive potential and do not allow it to be more than a link in the chain of evolution. On the other hand, absolute randomness would preclude any order at all. Our conceptual opposition between order and randomness seems to be one more of these more or less artificial mental dichotomies.

When numerous elements of one kind become connected as in a population, or even in a composite system at its critical state, order seems to spring out from randomness at the so-called edge of chaos (self-organized criticality), probably because some rules of behavior emerge and stabilize. The cause or condition seems to be, for the population or composite system, to receive recurrent inputs of energy.

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]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint