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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SEGREGATION (Progressive) 1)4)

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The process through which "components of a system become increasingly more independent and isolated, leading to the eventual dissolution of the system" (B. BANATHY, 1973, p.88).

According to HALL & FAGEN the concepts of totality and additivity must be clearly distinguished.By additivity, they seem to understand the existence of clearly identifiable parts in the system.

They describe (in a somewhat ambiguous way) two possible modes of progressive segregation in a system.

The first one is related to the breakdown of the system: certain parts stop functioning and slowly, the functional interrelations disappear, up to the point of complete disaggregation of the system.

The second one corresponds to growth and is somehow antithetical to the first one: "The system changes in the direction of increasing division into subsystems and sub-subsystems or differentiation of functions" (1956, p.22) The authors use as an example the embryo's development or the differentiation of a communication net.

The difference between both processes is so significant that it does not seem quite adequate to use the same expresion in both cases. "Progressive segregation" could be restricted to the decomposition process. Conversely, structural and functional subdivision, which corresponds to a growing degree of heterogeneity, could be called for example, "Progressive differentiation".

However, starting from the initial autogenesis, progressive differentiation and progressive segregation seem to constitute a natural sequence in complex systems, in accordance with the 2nd principle of thermodynamics.

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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