in his paper "resilience and stability of ecological systems" (1973), c.s. holling first explored the topic of resilience through its application to the field of ecology. ecological resilience was defined as a "measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between state variables." holling found that such a framework can be applied to other forms of resilience. the application to ecosystems was later used to draw into other manners of human, cultural and social applications. the random events described by holling are not only climatic, but instability to neutral systems can occur through the impact of fires, the changes in forest community or the process of fishing. stability, on the other hand, is the ability of a system to return to an equilibrium state after a temporary disturbance. multiple state systems rather than objects should b studied as the world is a heterogeneous space with various biological, physical and chemical characteristics.