DESCRIPTION (Internal System's)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 863 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics, Methodology or model |
This is the traditional way of description.
R. ROSEN states: “Typically such a description begins with a characterization of what the system is like at an instant of time; such a characterization is said to define a state of the system. The totality of all the possible states of the system, meaning the totality of different aspects the system can assume for us at an instant of time, forms a set called the state space of the system” (1972, p.50).(with the corresponding state variables).
This is satisfactory for linear systems, but quite insufficient for nonlinear ones. In these cases, at least two essential characteristics of the system escape to this kind of internal description:
- the mechanism of self-catalytic hypercycles, which describes how some states are regenerated from other states;
- The organizational closure, closely related to the former mechanism, which determines which states are admitted and which ones are excluded, in order to maintain the system's identity.