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A number of entropy models of social systems have been developed recently. Unfortunately, the complementarity of these approaches remains largely unanalysed, due to terminological and conceptual differences among them. There is an urgent need for a meta‐theoretical framework that will facilitate the analysis and comparison of all social entropy models. System entropy analysis (SEA), as presented here, is designed to fill this need. It is a second‐order, meta‐analytic tool which analyses each approach in terms of its major concepts, its basic units of analysis, its definition and measurement of entropy, and its specification of microstates and macrostates. First discusses the need for SEA, and then specifies its structure. Concludes with an application of SEA to the comparison and integration of three entropy approaches: synergetics, complexity theory and social entropy theory (SET).

The goal is to find a systemic information assembling mechanism, which would describe not only a human being's way of organizing the accepted information but also the general information regularities of this process, applied to different information objects.

Mathematical formalism of Informational Macrodynamics is employed for system modeling of the object's regularities and the main systemic mechanisms. The developed systemic assembling mechanism joins a chaotic oscillation of incoming information frequencies, initiating a chaotic resonance, into a cooperative attractor. A chain of sequentially built attractors generates a collective information dynamic network (IN), whose hierarchy models the multiple information contributions. An information structure of the IN node's attractors is memorized by the key‐lock connections of resonance frequencies.

The results indicate that formalized functions of the assembling cooperative information mechanisms represent a general attribute of a system.

A wide area of applications includes behavior analysis, cognition, artificial intelligence, data organization and management, social systems, and education.

The considered results bring together the formal systemic model of the regularities of collective macrodynamics and the mathematical evaluation of a complex individual's behavior in a collective environment.

Points out that differences in the background of the working population, are often made responsible for the observed inequality of income distribution. Explores whether the observed distribution in incomes in countries such as the Federal Republic of Germany (West and East), Great Britain, Sweden, the United States and Brazil could not be the result of a statistical distribution process in which households participate. Recalls the early work in statistical thermodynamics by Boltzmann and Maxwell, who studied the distribution of energy among an ensemble of identical molecules, and which showed that not all molecules hold the same energy, but rather that the distribution has an exponential fall‐off character, with most molecules being in the lower energy bracket. Adapts the Maxwell‐Boltzmann distribution to incomes, and transforms these distributions into well‐known Lorenz graphs, and obtains a perfect match for each examined country. Suggests that, as the distributions can be directly related to their corresponding statistical weights, and as their logarithms are proportional to entropy in statistical thermodynamics, it could be shown that the unequal income distribution has a higher entropy, and therefore is more stable than the corresponding low entropy distribution resulting from Boulding′s principle of equal advantage where all households earn the same income. Supposes that neither of the two extreme stand‐points to explain the inequality of incomes can lead to a totally satisfactory explanation. Proposes that evolutionary strategies may be an interesting lead to follow up in more detail.

The purpose of this paper is to show that there are some underlying principles of granular media that can be derived from statistical mechanics and that could be useful when considered in the context of computer simulations.

The fundamentals of statistical mechanics are presented and they are revised in order to set up a suitable approach for jammed static granular media. After a conceptual discussion about the entropy of granular matter, some specific statistical mechanics approaches that have been used for granular media are reviewed. Finally, a numerical simulation, conducted using an open source molecular dynamics code, is included as an illustrative example.

It is shown qualitatively how statistical mechanics can be used to analytically compute the expected statistical distribution of some quantities in numerical simulations.

The computation of entropy from histograms and the establishment of the constraints of the ensembles in simulations are still open issues.

Considering the entropy could set up new computational techniques. Initial arrangements could be analyzed in terms of their probability of occurrence and of their “distance” to the most probable state.

The paper includes the distribution of the mean force‐moment tensor component of a fast cyclic quasi isotropic compression process of a simple granular media. Results show how the system tends to an equilibrium state.

Science of systems requires a specific and constructive mathematical model and language, which describe jointly such systemic categories as adaptation, self‐organization, complexity, evolution, and bring the applied tools for building a system model for each specific object of a diverse nature. This formalism should be connected directly with a world of information and computer applications of systemic model, developed for a particular object. The considered information systems theory (IST) is aimed at building a bridge between the mathematical systemic formalism and information technologies to develop a constructive systemic model of revealing information regularities and specific information code for each object.

To fulfill this goal and the considered systems' definition, the IST joins two main concepts: unified information description of interacted flows, initiated by the sources of different nature, with common information language and systems modeling methodology, applied to distinct interdisciplinary objects; general system's information formalism for building the model, which allows expressing mathematically the system's regularities and main systemic mechanisms.

The formalism of informational macrodynamics (IMD), based of the minimax variational principle, reveals the system model's main layers: microlevel stochastics, macrolevel dynamics, hierarchical dynamic network (IN) of information structures, its minimal logic, and optimal code of communication language, generated by the IN hierarchy, dynamics, and geometry. The system's complex dynamics originate information geometry and evolution with the functional information mechanisms of ordering, cooperation, mutation, stability, diversity, adaptation, self‐organization, and the double helix's genetic code.

The developed IMD's theoretical computer‐based methodology and the software has been applied to such areas as technology, communications, computer science, intelligent processes, biology, economy, management, and other nonphysical and physical subjects.

The IMD's macrodynamics of uncertainties connect randomness and regularities, stochastic and determinism, reversibility and irreversibility, symmetry and asymmetry, stability and instability, structurization and stochastization, order and disorder, as a result of micro‐macrolevel's interactions for an open system, when the external environment can change the model's structure.

This article deals first in a theoretical fashion – a kind of a literature review – with the concept of randomness, as this appears in various disciplines. Second, an empirical approach is performed with actual data concerning marine accidents in the form of ships totally lost in two counts: ships lost per area and ships lost per month. The first appears non random and the latter is random! This finding is very crucial for the countries with the most dangerous areas, as well as for IMO. The test used for non‐randomness is the BDS statistic. The BDS statistic tests for the nonlinear dependence. The test proved randomness for monthly time series at both 95 per cent and 99 per cent confidence and non‐randomness for area data at the same confidence levels as above.

Emery and Trist were the first to design an influential taxonomy of four social fields to accommodate the perceived emergence of a new type of business environment, the type 4 turbulent field. This captured the predicament of leading companies suddenly confronted with, what Christensen called much later, disruptive change. Their taxonomy was based on the study of adaptive behavior on linear dynamical systems. This paper proposes a modification of the taxonomy on the basis of Synergetics to enable dealing with the nonlinear evolutionary dynamics of complex probabilistic business systems. Synergetics focuses on what happens in phase transitions or bifurcations which appear to be the essential nature of turbulent fields. Furthermore, Haken's slaving principle and the concept of the order parameter are remarkably well‐suited to review the Christensen's findings of companies held captive by customers and, particularly, the puzzling delay shown by leading companies in responding to newcomers. These newcomers typically change the nature of the order parameters of type 3 established fields, as represented by Christensen's product performance characteristics, which may cause customers to switch their preferences and buying behavior. Thus the apparent stability of an established field can be quite deceptive. As such, this paper suggests the existence of a lock‐out principle complementary to the lock‐in principle described by Arthur in his work.

This is an excellent book. Coming as it does from the pen of a scientist who is also an experienced teacher it fulfils all that the author set out to accomplish. Of the existing books on Thermodynamics comparatively few have succeeded in presenting the subject in so attractive and palatable a fashion—attractive because the art of the true teacher illumines and embellishes the whole work and palatable because, while the average engineering student has very often viewed the study of thermodynamics as a form of forced labour due to the wrong approach, Dr Schmidt, who was Professor of Thermodynamics in the Engineering University of Brunswick, succeeds from the outset in focusing the reader's attention and whetting his curiosity. He then proceeds so to build up the fundamentals as to make the deeper theories and their application, which are so ably handled later in the book, a revelation of clarity and development.