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

CRITICAL EFFECT 1)2)

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An effect in a process which significantly changes the course or even the nature of the process.

In some cases the critical effect can either put an end to the process and eventually damage or destroy the system that depends on it.

Any critical effect corresponds to an overshooting, i.e. the crossing of the threshold at which the process or systems loses its dynamic stability and turns totally irreversible. An example is the rupture of an aneurism, the effect resulting from a peak of blood pressure (the immediate cause within a protracted arterial degradation process)

The sudden effect is so dramatic that it end the very process that produced it, and initiates the total destruction of the concerned living system.

It is the case of the "camel's broken back"in the popular saying: the camel is doomed.

Epoch making historical events are thus considered because they usher new and very different social and political processes, i.e. while being results of anterior sequences, they mark a significant discontinuity.

→ Chaos; Destructuration; Disasters; Disintegration; Disturbance; Emergence; Node (Critical); Nucleation mechanism

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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