The history of the disciplines that led to the development of systems analysis is marked by a curious relationship between static and dynamic approaches. Although lhe imporlance of the dynamical element was recognized quile early on, lhe method chosen, more often than not, was a static equilibrium analysis. One reason for this obviously lies in the mathematical intricacies of non- equilibrium situations. Although Poincare and various other classical authors pointed oul the amazing complexity of some mechanical problems, lhe general lrend, as reflected in the standard texlbooks, was lo ignore...