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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FIXED POINT 2)

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The terminal point of a trajectory in the state space of a system (J. CRUTCHFIELD et al, 1989, p.41).

CRUTCHFIELD et al explain: "… this fixed point is an attractor … Any system that comes to rest with the passage of time can be characterized by a fixed point in state space. This is an example of a very general phenomenon, where losses due to friction or viscosity, for example, cause orbits to be attracted to a smaller region of the state space with lower dimension" (Ibid).

In fact, the fixed point is generally the final state of the system, when it undergoes no more transformations (as for example a physical system, like the pendulum) or is not anymore a system (as in the case of living systems). Such a final fixed point is also sometimes called a sink. However, this word also has another quite different meaning. A fixed point which attract in one direction and repels in another is called a saddle. A point of origin is a source.

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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