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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SELECTION IN POPULATIONS (Combinatorial) 2)4)

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This concept has been proposed by W.M.S. RUSSELL (1961, p.84) and may be resumed as well as generalized in the following fashion:

1. In any population widely scattered in a very diversified environment, new characters may appear at random in many different places;

2. If the environment, while diversified is not fragmented, no splitting of isolated populations will tend to happen and no new species will appear;

3. Thus the global pool of diversified characters will tend to increase;

4. Faced with even wide variations of the environment, the population will be able to adapt. Some characters will become widely represented and others numerically quite reduced. However, probably none will disappear totally.

5. Variety being globally enhanced, the population as a whole will have a greater survival potential.

The concept is related to, and explains polymorphism.

These ideas can be applied in quite a number of very different situations:

- In unstable climatic environments, as for example in West African Sahel, considerable genetic variety in cereals guarantee at least a minimum harvest, be the climate too dry or too rainy, and whatever kinds of pests are present and moreover, without any need for artificial fertilizer, pesticides or irrigation schemes.

- In human populations, according to RUSSELL. "Cultural rigidity… is accompanied by socio-economic decline" (Ibid, p.58). This has probably been one cause of the demise of Soviet Union, and also of numerous archaic human groups and, in another setting, of many businesses stiffled by authoritarian rule.

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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