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

COMPLEXIFICATION 1)4)

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Growing diversification in a system's complexity.

To become more complex, a system needs to enhance its internal variety. This is possible only by obtaining a richer internal combinatorics.

This can be obtained only by an increase of the number of elements, allowing for a factorial growth of possible combinations (if no new constraints are introduced).

It is debatable if all classes of systems are able to do this.

Only complex social systems, when still endowed with many "open ends", can conceivably become more complex, because they are more open and less integrated than biological systems for example, which are strictly submitted to organizational closure. In social systems, writes P.M. ALLEN "Complexification feeds on itself because it creates new situations and dimensions& Fluctuations, both in normal behavior in the real world, and in the mental maps of actors, explore situations which are richer then the reduced description of the world given by any solution of the model. These explorations can lead to amplification by the non linearities in the system and hence to its structural evolution" (1982, p.59).

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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