Everything about The Energy Systems Language totally explained
The
Energy Systems Language (right), also referred to as
Energese,
Energy Circuit Language and
Generic Systems Symbols, was developed by the
ecologist Howard T. Odum and colleagues in the 1950s during studies of Tropical Forests funded by the United States Atomic Energy Commission.
Design intent
The design intent of the energy systems language was to facilitate the generic depiction of energy flows through any scale system while encompassing the
laws of physics, and in particular, the laws of
thermodynamics (see
energy transformation for an example).
In particular H.T.Odum aimed to produce a language which could facilitate the intellectual analysis, engineering synthesis and management of global systems such as the geobiosphere, and it's many subsystems. Within this aim, H.T. Odum had a strong concern that many abstract mathematical models of such systems were not thermodynamically valid. Hence he used analog computers to make system models due to their
intrinsic value; that is, the electronic circuits are of value for modelling natural systems which are assumed to obey the laws of energy flow, because, in themselves the circuits, like natural systems, also obey the known laws of energy flow, where the
energy form is electrical. However Odum was interested not only in the electronic circuits themselves, but also in how they might be used as formal analogies for modeling other systems which also had energy flowing through them. As a result, Odum didn't restrict his inquiry to the analysis and synthesis of any one system in isolation. The discipline that's most often associated with this kind of approach, together with the use of the energy systems language is known as
Systems Ecology.
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 L.v.
Bertalanffy.
For Odum, in order to achieve a holistic understanding of how many apparently different systems actually effect 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.
Pictographic icons
In order to aid learning, in
Modeling for all Scales Odum and Odum (2000) suggested systems might first be introduced with pictographic icons, and then later defined in the generic sysbolism.
Pictograms have therefore been used in software programs like Extend(tm) to depict the basic categories of the Energy Systems Language. Some have argued that such an approach shares similar motivations to
Otto Neurath's
isotype project,
Leibniz's (
Characteristica Universalis)
Enlightenment Project and
Buckminster Fuller's works.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Energy Systems Language'.
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