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

EXPLOSIVE PROCESS 1)2)

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A self-destructive process resulting from a constantly recurrent positive feedback.

Any process must be fed by some kind of inputs, whether material, energetic or informative, obtained from an environmental source. As positive feedbacks produce a major need of inputs, the accumulative acceleration of their use tends to an also accelerated exploitation of the source, leading to over-exploitation or overburdening. This in turn leads the process to a runaway event that leaves it (and the system it belongs to) more or less quickly without the needed inputs (or outputs outlets, or sinks) and ends up in its destruction.

The same phenomenon may also lead to internal overload, or in populations, to overcrowding. Paradoxically, such overload is conducive to a kind of de-synchronization and lysis of the normal interactions network and to the uncoordinated dispersal of the members of the population. (B. WALLISER, 1977, p.84).

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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