Determinate: Theoretical Biology
Indeterminate factors are responsible for a loss of generality where determinate factors are responsible for closing of the system due to definition.
Lindblom
http://h2o.law.harvard.edu/ViewProject.do?projectID=541
Bertalanffy Growth Equation
photocredit: qmssjp
"Bertalanffy's equation is commonly used to indeterminate growth. Bertalanffy claimed that this growth pattern results from growth potential decreasing with age. An alternative approach provided by life history theory predicts that indeterminate growth is optimal for organisms in a seasonal environment and results not from decreasing growth potential but from allocating increasingly less energy with age into growth, and more into reproduction. Bertalanffy's curves are the result of evolutionary optimization and should not be used in optimization s as an assumption, but they can be used as a tool to describe the indeterminate growth pattern phenomenologically."
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1461-0248.1998.0007b.x/abs/
Bertalanffy Growth Equation
Bertalanffy, L. von 1938. A quantitative theory of organic growth (Inquiries on growth laws. II). Human Biol. 10: 181-213.
Von Bertalanffy growth :
L(t) = Lº*(1-e(k))(t-t0)
Bertalanffy Systems Science
General System Theory (GST)
"Already in the 1930's Bertalanffy formulated the organismic system theory that later became the kernel of the GST (1949b, 1960a). His starting point was to deduce the phenomena of life from a spontaneous grouping of system forces--comparable, for instance, to the system developmental biology nowadays. He based his approach on the phenomenal assumption that there exists a dynamical process inside the organic system. In the next step he led the heuristic fiction of the organism as an open system striving towards a steady state. Then he postulated two biological principles, namely, the maintenance of the organism in the non-equilibrium, and the hierarchic organization of a systemic structure. Finally he furnished this biological system theory with a research program that dealt with the quantitative kinetic of growth and metabolism."
http://www.isss.org/lumLVB.htm
General System Theory (GST)
"Systems theory was established as a science by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Anatol Rapoport, Kenneth E. Boulding, William Ross Ashby, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson and others in the 1950s, particularly during discussions at the Macy conferences. Systems theory, in its transdisciplinary role, brings together theoretical principles and concepts from ontology, philosophy of science, physics, biology and engineering. Applications are found in numerous fields including geography, sociology, political science, organizational theory, management, psychotherapy (within family systems therapy) and economics among others.
- 1 Overview
- 2 Types of Systems
- 3 Systems Inquiry
- 4 General Systems Theory as an objective of systemics
- 5 System Dynamics
- 6 Sociology
- 7 Organizational Theory
- 8 Living Systems Theory
- 9 References
- 10 Further reading
- 11 See also
- 12 External links
- 13 Un-annotated external links "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory
http://h2o.law.harvard.edu/ViewProject.do?projectID=541
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