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.

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DESTABILIZATION (Signals of impending societal) 1)4)

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K.E.F. WATT and Paul F. CRAIG suggest seven kinds of signals of impending societal destabilization:

"1. Dangerous dependence on a single critical limiting resource at risk of near-term supply curtailment

2. A dangerously coarse-grained environment

3. Lack of redundancy in the social infrastructure. (What do we have already in place to allow us to survive sudden curtailment of petroleum supplies?)

4. Lack of fast-acting negative feedback loops in complex systems of impending resource shortages, sets systems up for shocks

5. Top-heavy, multi-layered, rigid organizational structures

6. Curtailment of migration because of prohibitive resource costs

7. Excessive connectance between the economics of different nations means that now, a shock anywhere translates into a shock at other, remote sites" (1986, p. 200).

Some of these signals at least are valid for enterprises, individuals and, in ecological settings, for species.

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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