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

LIMITING FACTOR 1)

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An essential component, flow or condition whose absence, short supply or excessive concentration acts as a check on growth or even endangers the survival of a population or system.

According to A. LOTKA: "The significance of such limiting factors seems to have been first pointed out by J. LIEBIG: "The yield (of the soil) depends on the nutrient whose quantity is minimum".

LOTKA adds: "Limiting factors not only set certain bounds to the growth of the components to which they are thus related, but are competent also to give rise to the phenomenon of moving equilibrium" (1956, p. 97).

This is very important for ecosystems, which may "bounce" from one type of equilibrium to another under the influence of some positive or negative variation in a limiting factor.

G. WEINBERG proposed a "Law of limiting factors", as a generalization from the economist's Law of Diminishing Returns.(1975, p.45). However, the latter is merely a consequence of the first one, which seems more precisely causal.

In the same vein, J. WARFIELD enounced the following "Law of Limits": "To any activity in the universe there exists a corresponding set of limits upon that activity, which determines the feasible extend of the activity" (1991, pers. comm.).

WARFIELD states: "The limits may be active or inactive, generic or specific, fixed or movable, autonomous or responsive" (Ibid).

WARFIELD's law is very general. A frequent practical example of responsive limit is the logistic one, whose logistic equation is the mathematical formulation.

It would seem that any "autonomous" limit turns responsive when the encroaching system puts sufficient pressure on the environment.

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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