BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

BY-PRODUCT 1)

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A secondary product or side-effect of the activity of a system.

By-products or side-effects are mainly results of the activities of artificial systems. Save (very significant) exceptions, they are generally damped by the environment. However various problems may become serious.

First, while slight side-effects or limited quantities of by-products can be absorbed by the environment, massive quantities may suffocate it.

Secondly, there is a specific critical time lapse for assimilation of by-products by the environment. A quite obvious case is half-life at a scale of millenia for radioactive waste produced by nuclear energy utilities.

Thirdly, some synthetic by-products (or even products) are unassimilable by the environment, which offers no known process to recycle them.

The by-products and side-effects problems are typically systemic, because they affect or may affect the whole natural setting, or a large part of it, during very long periods.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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