BIFURCATION AS AN IRREVERSIBLE PHENOMENON
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 282 ▶ |
| Object type | Methodology or model |
I. PRIGOGINE and P.M. ALLEN write: “When bifurcation occurs, then stability of the existing state of the system breaks down, allowing the amplification of some small random fluctuation to occur and to carry the system off to one of the possible, new branches of solution”.
And “… nonlinear interactions can give rise to bifurcating solutions of the phenomenological equations, such as those of chemical kinetics, for example, and this gives rise to new dynamic, coherent structures, which have been called dissipative *structures. However, even in equilibrium systems, bifurcating solutions can occur, but in such cases they correspond to the occurence of an equilibrium phase transition” (1982, p.7).
According to F. HEYLIGHEN when a bifurcation takes place, pushing the system into one of several new regimes: “…the process is no longer predictable. We do not know which of the available trajectories the system will choose at the bifurcation point. The process becomes stochastic”. (1989, p.366).
At a point of bifurcation the process becomes divergent. Thus bifurcations are antinomic to equifinality.