Energy Systems Language - General Characteristics

General Characteristics

When applying the electronic circuits (and schematics) to modeling ecological and economic systems, Odum believed that generic categories, or characteristic modules, could be derived. Moreover he felt that a general symbolic system, fully defined in electronic terms (including the mathematics thereof) would be useful for depicting real system characteristics, such as the general categories of consumption, production, energy storage, flow and transformation. Central principles of electronics also therefore became central features of the energy systems language - Odum's generic symbolism.

Depicted to the left is what the generic symbol for storage, which Odum named the Bertalanffy module, in honor of the general systems theorist Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

For Odum, in order to achieve a holistic understanding of how many apparently different systems actually affect each other, it was important to have a generic language with a massively scalable modeling capacity - to model global-to-local, ecological, physical and economic systems. The intention was, and for those who still apply it, is, to make biological, physical, ecological, economic and other system models thermodynamically, and so also energetically, valid and verifiable. As a consequence the designers of the language also aimed to include the energy metabolism of any system within the scope of inquiry.