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

STABILITY (Dynamic) 1)2)

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Property of a system that maintains its structures and functions within well defined and relatively narrow limits during a long period of time.

K. BOULDING observes: "… it was an economist, Paul SAMUELSON, in his Foundations of Economic Analysis, who gave the first clear exposition of the principle that equilibrium of any system has to be derived from its dynamic path and that we could not find out about the stability of an equilibrium from an inspection of the equations of equilibrium alone… Equilibrium is simply a dynamic process in which the dynamic path of the system leads to a reproduction in successive states of some initial equilibrium state. "Staying the same" is simply a special case of "changing" (1972, p.81).

J.de ROSNAY comments: "To maintain itself is to endure. Negative feedbacks, by controlling divergent positive ones, tend to stabilize a system and to allow it to last. The system is able to regulate itself.

"To mix stability and dynamics may see paradoxical. In fact this link expresses that the structures or functions of an open system remain self-similar in spite of the permanent renewal of the systems components. This persistence… is dynamic stability. It is found in the cell, the living system, or the flame of a candle.

"Dynamic stability is the result of combination and readjustement of numerous equilibria attained and maintained by the system, as for example the equilibrium of internal medium of the organism… These equilibria are thus dynamic. This imposes however a distinction between equilibrium between forces and equilibrium between flows" (1990, p.117).

Homeostasis as studied by W. CANNON (1963) is dynamic stability in living systems.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

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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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