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 (Nearly decomposable) 1)2)

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A system "in which the interactions among the subsystems are weak, but not negligible" (H. SIMON, 1965, p.69).

The subsystems and their interactions can generally be represented in a matrix divided into submatrixes, wherein most intersections between columns and lines are void.

SIMON enounces the following propositions relative to these systems:

"a)… the short run behavior of each of the component subsystems is approximately independent of the short -run behavior of the other components;

"b) in the long run, the behavior of anyone of the components depends in only an aggregate way on the behavior of the other components" (Ibid).

SIMON adds: "intra-component linkages are generally stronger than intercomponent linkages. This fact has the effect of separating the high-frequency dynamics of a hierarchy – involving the internal structure of the components – from the low-frequency dynamics – involving interaction among components" (p.72).

According to SIMON, the nearly decomposable system model can be widely used, for social and economic systems, as well as for many physico-chemical systems, whose parts are very imperfectly connected.

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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