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.

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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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SOLITON 1)2)

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A solitary wave, able to persist in a well-defined shape, for a long distance and an appreciable span of time.

According to C. REBBI, a soliton does not fades away because it is submittend to a topological closure (1979).

This relates this phenomenon to synergetics and shows that it must be under the control of an order parameter.

Accordingly, solitons are forms of spontaneous self-organization.

F. David PEAT explains: "… solitons are local phenomena that are constantly sustained through a global activity; they are born, persist as patterns in space and time, and then die back into their ground… In the case of solitons it has been possible to analyse a system into relatively independent parts, within the context of the whole… It is only when analysis and reduction become absolute and the solitons are taken for truly independent elements of reality that confusion sets in" (1987, p.75).

In short, solitons are forms of higher level organization emerging from lower level interactive phenomena.

Solitons have been discovered in many nonlinear systems (in tidal waves, in vibrating atoms, in electrical circuits, in nerve impulses, etc.) According to F. David PEAT: "It has even been suggested that elementary particles are not in fact the fundamental building blocks of matter but are the solitons of an underlying nonlinear quantum field" (1987, p.74).

Many more uses of the soliton model could probably be found, even possibly in economics and in social sciences.

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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