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

DISINTEGRATION 1)2)

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A destructive process which breaks up the necessary interactions among the elements or parts of a system.

The disintegration process destroys the system by reducing it to an uncoordinated heap of disconnected elements and making it disappear as a significant whole. The elements do recuperate their total independence or, at least, even when they remain close to each other, are not anymore functionally cooperative. An example is the wreck of a sunken ship.

Disintegration results from the inability of some essential part of the system, generally some important control system, to perform its specific task. This may result from some irreversible damage or from the interruption of a basic flow of inputs or outputs. Some authors use the term "segregation" in the same meaning as disintegration (B. BANATHY, 1973, p.88).

When basic processes become impaired, the system endures growing stress that it becomes finally unable to conteract and loses any possibility to resist external perturbations. Most of its elements then disperse more or less randomly in the environment.

However, in some cases, some structures may resist destruction for a long, or even very long time: examples are animal and vegetal fossils, skeletons, ruined historical buildings and even so called dead languages as Egyptian hieroglyphic language or sumerian cuneiform

→ Ageing; Aura; Autopoiesis; Decay; Entropy production (Minimum); General adaptation syndrome; Invironment

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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