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

SYSTEM (Integrated) 2)4)

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A system whose components, parts or subsystems are strongly interconnected and interacting.

Strictly speaking, a system that would not be at least minimally integrated would not be a system at all. However, a vegetal, animal or human colonial system, for instance, is looser than a biological one.

In an integrated system, processes and functions are permanently and closely interdependent. Their relations are regulated by a hierarchy of controls. The system cannot survive the complete destruction or impairment of any of its critical subsystems, nor the severance of their interactions. None of the subsystems can normally survive outside of the system.

Integrated systems are also characterized by the existence of an internal environment (invironment), of which the subsystems depend for their survival and which they collectively maintain. The most integrated the system, the lesser the number of its elements that interact directly with the environment.

Biological systems are more integrated than ecosystems and these, in turn, more so than composite systems. Man seems to be the most complex integrated living system, due mainly to the capacity to pick up and process information.

Systems that become too strongly integrated run the risk to become rigid and blocked, thus loosing adaptive capacity, and risking destruction. The demise of U.R.S.S. was a good example.

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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