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

DISRUPTION 1)

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The breaking asunder of any system by the destruction of one or various of its regulating devices.

Regulators are circuits, based on feedbacks and composed of two or various interconnected arcs. Cutting one of these arcs, or even only mishandle it, may disorganize or destroy the whole system.

This is frequently the case when mere consequences are confused for causes in complex systems. A good example has been the HWO campaign to erradicate paludism through insecticide spraying against anopheles, and synthetic drugs use against the plasmodium, without taking in account that paludism is part of very complex ecological systems, including waters, plants, animals and human settlements of great variety. Moreover, the co-evolutive ability and adaptiveness of the intervening species also were ignored. As a global result, paludism is presently out of control in expanding zones.

In G. BATESON's words: "Characteristically, errors occur wherever the altered causal chain is part of some large or small circuit structure of a system. And the remainder of our technology (of which medical science is only a part) bids fair to disrupt the rest of our ecology" (1973, p.119).

The disruption problem is a typical result of partialization in the management of systems of any kinds.

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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