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-
- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 1996
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, ca4810593b2703dcaa087957ab13af91, and 227da936724c4223c5a64764d3922694
- Description:
- The issue of discrete versus continuous formulation of system dynamics models has provided for lively, thought provoking discussion among modeling practitioners for more than thirty years. As early as 1961, Forrester argued that models based in the philosophy that real systems re continuous. Forrester used the example that of a contract signing, normally a discrete event, and explained how contracts can be viewed as continuous when one considers that contracts go through a process of negotiations. As the expectation associated with a contract signing increase the parties begin preparation so that the contract obligation can be fulfilled (1961; p.65). Thus, a contract signing represents a continuous process. The debate of discrete versus continuous has continued into the into the 1990's with Richardson (1991) maintained that the decision to model a problem discretely or continuously depends on the conceptual distance from which one views a problem. Richardson (1991) makes a strong argument for a continuous world perspective when he writes, Only from a more distant perspective in which events behavior is a consequence of feedback structure arise and be perceived to yield powerful insight (p. 346)