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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EVOLVABILITY 5)

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"The capacity of genes to mutate and modify an organism's genotype without jeopardizing its fitness" (C. KOCH and G. LAURENT, 1999, p.96)

The authors write: "Evolvability should be favored by organismic compartmentation, redundancy, weak and multiple (parallel) linkages between regulatory processes and, finally, component robustness. These features all imply that evolution can only tinker with a system successfully if many of its constituents and coupling links are not essential for survival of the organism"…

Applying this to the brain, they state that it should be "… replete with specialized circuits, parallel pathways, and redundant mechanisms" (Ibid)

The evolvability concept is also probably significant for evolving complex social systems, specially the man-planet system presently in process of organization.

The author's comment is related to the evolutive path that led to the shaping of the highly organized mammalian and human nervous system and, particularly brains.

However, the concept and its shades of meaning seem to be generally applicable to any evolving system, including social organizations.

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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