CYCLOMORPHIC

Charles François (2004). CYCLOMORPHIC, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(1): 815.

Collection	International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics
Year	2004
Vol. (num.)	2(1)
ID	◀ 815 ▶
Object type	General information, Methodology or model

Character of a process that seems to show irregular or imperfect cyclical behavior.

This corresponds to the practical situation in concrete systems, whose periodic behavior is submitted to numerous endogenous and/or exogenous perturbations. Interferences between cycles of different nature within a complex system may also lead to a global cyclomorphic character, closely similar to chaos. Some of these — but not all — may themselves be cyclical or cyclomorphic This explains why cyclical models, even cross-level embedded complex ones, are practically never entirely satisfying. It does not however mean that they are useless: fuzzy predictability is better than total unpredictability .