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

CONSTRAINTS (Self-generated) 1)2)

Those constraints imposed on the system by its own activity.

G. ARMALAGOS writes: "As long as a virus has an effective mechanism for jumping from one person to another, it can afford to kill its victims" (1998, p.25).

If it however does kill too quickly, it limits severely its own expansion: "Gruesome pathogens such as Ebola are unlikely to cause a widespread epidemic because they sicken and kill so quickly that victims can easily be identified and isolated" (Ibid., p.24)

Historically, the same effect operated in a different way: After the "Black death" pest pandemics in Europe (1347-1352), successive resurgences of the disease killed less and less people, probably at least in part because the survivors of former epidemics offered a growing resistance to it and somehow transmitted it to their descendants.

The growing resistance of pests and pathogens to a number of our new 20th. Century medicines is probably another example.

More generally, new collective constraints emerge from the massive success of some innovation. The growing traffic problems resulting from the evermore massive use of cars is an example. This corresponds to J.van GIGCH's side or spill-over effects, or to the French sociologist R. BOUDON's perverse effects.

Such self-generated constraints are due to multiply in our expanding ecosystems and sociosystems, under the pressure of accelerating quantitative growth.

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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