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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STABILITY (Struggle for) 1)4)

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By its own nature, any system tends to remain within a defined stability boundary, which ensures its homeostasis and permanence, as long as no basic change in its environment throws it forcefully out of its domain of attraction.

However, as noted by C. HOLLING, human systems (which are increasingly destabilizing natural ones) must also increasingly: "… learn to live with disturbance, live with variability and live with uncertainties" (1976, p.91). This is the price to pay for survival.

We must accept that we are moving away from homeostatic stability and that the more we move away from it, the more potentially dangerous the situation of our systems, and the more difficult to turn back toward "classical" stability.

The struggle for stability implies for our dissipative and emergent systems, the search for a higher level stability, maintaining resilience by creating the possibility to switch, when needed, from one domain of attraction to another, within a blown up global stability domain.

A typical case where such ideas should be applied is the necessity to design alternative strategies in our fight against agricultural or pathological pests.

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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