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

RANDOM WALK 2)

An exploration of some concrete or abstract space without any determining guidance.

S LEVY reminds us of the probability theorem that states that "Starting from any point in a random walk restricted to a finite space, we can reach any other point any number of times" (1992, p.303).

The conditon for a random walk is that no attractor should exist within the space considered or, in other words, that no gradient be present.

Once some reinforcement factor appears within the explored space, the "explorers" search tends to become organized. This is basic for the appearence of self-organization in networks, for instance of social robots.

It is also the case for many seemingly aperiodic oscillations: markets fluctuations for example cannot be satisfactorily modelized by random walks, because while their behavior is chaotic, it is however not perfectly undetermined.

In human generated more or less periodic processes (for ex. stock markets evolution) a loosely deterministic factor is present and active. This factor is psychological in each participating individual, but at the same time psychosocial among the group of investors as a whole. Markets, for ex. are not only fluctuating in relation to economic indicators, but also according to investors and speculators moods and beliefs, as they are not purely rational agents, nor omniscient.. If the majority are optimistic, the prices rise; if they turn pessimistic, the prices fall.

Moreover the shifts present two other defining characteristics:

- they are self-organizing processes, with critical thresholds of unstability

- as shown by ELLIOTT in the 1930's, long term movements can be graphically split into alterning medium and short component waves which appear to be grossly self-similar.

ELLIOTT's waves; Self-similarity in the WEIERSTRASS function

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: