VORTEX
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 3753 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Methodology or model |
A flow rotating about an axis within some medium which acts as an environment.
Vortices may appear in the most different types of fluids: stars clustered in spiral galaxies, planetary atmospheres (cyclones, hurricanes, typhons), oceanic waters, glaciers, rivers, vegetal and animal tissues, etc…
The French engineer Ch. LAVILLE devoted a book to vortices and wrote: “Whirling flows are trajectories along lines of least resistance. This implies that they condition the duration possibilities of a phenomenon”.
- “Vortices appear as phenomena limited in time and space: they arise, they grow, they go through a period of dynamic stability, they decline and disappear”. Even so, they may frequently remain dynamically stable for a long duration.
- “The emergence of a vortex is submitted to two conditions: an adequate environment, fluid by necessity (gazeous, liquid or finely divided solid) and a certain heterogeneity in this environment. In fact, all vortices arise from a movement of tangential opposition upon a mass in translation, thus creating a gyratory movement. Vortices thus result of the conjugated action of the central force that produced the translation and a couple creating the gyration; in other words, they are determined by a dissymmetry and, in their initial phase, they appear as a coil in the fluid mass”…
- “The composition of both movements, translation and gyration, that characterizes the vortex, produces closed helicoidal lines developing around a central axis, thus materializing brachystochrone (i.e. of shortest duration in time) trajectories”…
- “The vortex, in synthesis becomes individualized within the amorphous mass, of which it separated to take its form. To reach to this shape, it conforms to the following condition: The structural set of its current or tension lines communicates it resistance to oppose its deformation or destructuration by the environment” (1950, p.52-54).
These characteristics clearly show that all complex systems are in a sense stationary vortices of structuring energy.
The vortex model is quite important for the understanding of the genesis of systems. It relates to the following complex phenomena:
- the basic symmetry-breakings
- the resulting instabilities of energy flows
- the energy-matter equivalence
- the process-structure interrelations
- the genesis and transformation of forms
See for instance d'ARCY WENTWORTH THOMPSON book “On growth and form” (1916).
LAVILLE made moreover these interesting comments:
- Vortices are minimum resistence trajectories and, consequently condition the possibility of duration of a phenomenon.
- Vortices as phenomena are limited in space and time: they arise, grow, attain dynamic stability for some time, until they decline and disappear.
- A vortex separates from its environment and acquires an identity
- As its field communicates it a resistence to external disturbance, it becomes a more or less durable organization. (Ibid)
This last point offers an interesting insight into the very basic and general nature of autopoiesis and organizational closure models.