Construct · 4 fields · 4 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one word, four constructs Nearest construct by meaningexpansioncompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to cycle is expansion.
Hold this as a prompt, not a verdict. Two constructs sitting close in meaning is a reason to read them side by side and decide for yourself whether they are one idea under two names. It is not proof that they are. Compare the meanings in the Collider.
Spokes are fields; dashed arcs are shared lineage. Tap a field for its definition, unit, and measures.
Drag to watch the word get claimed. Each field appears at the publication date of the earliest source cited for it. Tap a year to see which.
The recurring rise and fall of aggregate economic activity, an expansion followed by a contraction, running through a whole economy over months and years. Burns and Mitchell, in Measuring Business Cycles in 1946, defined the business cycle as a sequence of expansions and contractions occurring at about the same time in many activities, recurrent but not periodic, lasting from about one to ten or twelve years. The referent is a national economy, and the unit is aggregate output, employment, and sales moving together through dated turning points. It shares the word with the other meanings only through the idea of return; nothing here runs a fixed sequence of states the way a cell does, and there is no path traced through a graph.[1]
The ordered sequence of phases, G1, S, G2, and M, by which one cell grows, copies its DNA, and divides into two. Nurse, reviewing a century of work in 2000, described the cell cycle as a controlled progression in which each phase is triggered only once the last is complete, governed by cyclin-dependent kinases and their checkpoints. The referent is a single dividing cell, and the unit is one round from birth to division. Unlike the business cycle it follows a fixed, gated order rather than recurring irregularly, and unlike a graph cycle it is a sequence of biological states in time, not a path traced through vertices.[2]
A closed path in a graph: a sequence of edges that starts and ends at the same vertex and repeats no edge or intermediate vertex along the way. Bondy and Murty, in Graph Theory with Applications in 1976, define a cycle as a closed walk in which the vertices are distinct except for the first and last, and measure it by its length. The referent is a mathematical object, a set of vertices and edges, and the unit is the closed walk itself. It is not a process in time at all; the return to the start is structural, not temporal, and no economy, cell, or planetary reservoir is involved.[3]
The circulation of a chemical element through the reservoirs of the Earth, the atmosphere, ocean, rock, and living things, driven by physical and biological fluxes. Falkowski and colleagues, in 2000, treated the global carbon cycle as a system of reservoirs and the fluxes of carbon between them, quantified in petagrams per year. The referent is a planetary system and a substance moving through it, and the unit is a flux between stores. It shares only the notion of return: carbon comes back to a reservoir the way activity returns to expansion, but here the thing that circulates is matter, not economic activity, a division sequence, or a path through a graph.[4]
Next
See how cycle sits against neighbouring constructs in the Collider, or export every reference on this page in one click.
Open in ColliderExport BibTeXReport this collisionCited on this page?
If your work is cited behind one of these entries, you know better than we do whether we captured the meaning right. Confirm it, suggest an edit, or dispute it, and your name goes on the entry as an author who has checked it, linked to your ORCID.
Claim your construct