The Energy Systems Language (right) was developed by the ecologist Howard T. Odum and colleagues for depicting the flows of energy qualities in general: i.e. in ecological, economic systems, or ecological economic metabolism. The language is a generalisation of electronic schematics. All systems depicted with the Energy Systems Language can therefore be defined in electronic circuits, and the mathematics thereof. Even though the Energy Systems Language is used to model ecological and socioeconomic systems, because it is definable in electronic circuits, the laws of physics are a necessary part of the language, and any models produced. In order to aid learning, pictograms have also been used to depict the basic categories of the Energy Systems Language.

See also

• Systems Ecology
• Emergy Synthesis
• Emergy
• Embodied energy
• Universal language
• Leibniz
• Characteristica universalis
• Principles of energetics

References

• M.T.Brown (2004) 'A picture is worth a thousand words: energy systems language and simulation', Ecological Modelling, 178: 83-100.
• H.T.Odum (1971) Environment, Society and Power, Wiley Interscience.
• H.T.Odum (1994) Ecological and General Systems: An Introduction to Systems Ecology, Colorado University Press, Colorado.
• P.J.Taylor and A.S.Blum (1991) "Ecosystems as Circuits: Diagrams and the Limits of Physical Analogies", Biology and Philosophy, 6: 275-294.

External links

• D.Cevolatti and S.Maud (2004) Realising the Enlightenment: H.T. Odum’s Energy Systems Language qua G.W.v Leibniz’s Characteristica Universalis, Ecological Modelling 178, pp. 279–292.

Emergy