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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FLOWS SLOWDOWN 2)

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In complex systems, flows of energy and matter are slower than in simpler systems.

Complexity of the system, for example in ecosystems, results in an ordered sharing of available resources in energy and matter. Such order tends to be hierarchical, with some dominant species in control of the power flow in the circuit (but also maximally depending on it).

In this way. the flow becomes sequentially divided, or cascaded, between numerous users and more organization is obtained with the same final level of entropy production. In H. ODUM words: "Unless special energies are directed to prevent succession, the complex system with its specializations performs more work functions for a total effort and displaces systems whose energies are going into storage instead of into useful work for competitive survival and dominance" (1971, p.112).

As a result, ODUM takes a dim view of man's general "simplification" of the natural systems by suppression of many of their participants. It would however seem that "useful work for competitive survival and dominance" is what precisely leads human systems to this simplification!

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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