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

WAVE 1)2)

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A periodic oscillation.

There are many classes of waves. A. BOGDANOV considers waves as "… the most widespread method in nature of preserving or restoring equilibria". Moreover "This is a kind of general model for innumerable processes of the inorganic universe… But this model is also applicable without limit to the realm of life: almost all of the life processes are of the periodic oscillation type" (1980, p.9).

However, even in this sense, waves seem to ride on more generic long term trends. E. JANTSCH, for instance, writes about "waves of organization (which) may be understood as another manifestation, at a macrolevel, of the basic evolutionary mechanism of "order through fluctuations", of a rhythm alternating between stabilization and mutation, as it has been described for nonequilibrium physical systems". (1975, p.253).

N. ELDREDGE and S. GOULD's model of punctuated (i.e. by periodic waves) evolution looks like another example of waves riding a more fundamental trend (1972, p.82-115).

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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