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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STRATEGY (Evolutionarily stable) 1)2)

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A strategy which, if most members of a population adopt it, cannot be bettered by an alternative strategy" (R. DAWKINS, 1978, p.74)

According to DAWKINS, this concept was introduced by J. MAYNARD SMITH.

DAWKINS explains it as follows: "… the best strategy for an individual depends on what the majority of the population are doing. Since the rest of the population consists of individuals, each one trying to maximize his own success, the only strategy that persists will be one which, once evolved, cannot be bettered by any deviant individual" (Ibid).

This is totally valid only in stable situations, as recognized by DAWKINS: "Following a major environmental change there may be a brief period of evolutionary instability, perhaps even oscillation in the population" (Ibid).

It should be observed that to speak of the evolutionary strategy of a population is somewhat semantically abusive. The individuals are more or less collectively subservient each one to all the others, in a statistical way: the global so-called strategy cannot be assigned to any specific entity; it remains diffuse within the population, and may be represented by a transitions probability matrix.

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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