Open System (systems Theory)

Open System (systems Theory)

An open system is a system which continuously interacts with its environment. The interaction can take the form of information, energy, or material transfers into or out of the system boundary, depending on the discipline which defines the concept (see below). An open system should be contrasted with the concept of an isolated system which exchanges neither energy, matter,nor information with its environment.

The concept of an "open system" was formalized within a framework that enabled one to interrelate the theory of the organism, thermodynamics, and evolutionary theory. This concept was expanded upon with the advent of information theory and subsequently systems theory. Today the concept has its applications in the natural and social sciences.

Thermodynamics
The classical Carnot heat engine
Branches Classical · Statistical · Chemical
Equilibrium / Non-equilibrium
Laws Zeroth · First · Second · Third
Systems State:
Equation of state
Ideal gas · Real gas
Phase of matter · Equilibrium
Control volume · Instruments

Read more about Open System (systems Theory):  In The Social Sciences

Famous quotes containing the words open and/or system:

    Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
    which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.
    Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)

    The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet’s year is completed, it will be found to be central.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)