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

CHOICE (Random) 2)

← Back

An arbitrary selection among a number of possibilities.

When some new design, or device or behavior is to be established and there is no obvious advantage of one type in relation to others, the choice is in some cases arbitrary, i.e. more or less left to chance.

Historical examples are right hand traffic in some countries and left hand one in others; or the use of the qwerty or the azerty keyboard in different countries.

However, once the decision has been taken, it starts to act as a constraint, orienting techniques and behavior in an ever more deterministic way. This is because any different way to construct devices or to organize behavior would provoke costly incoherences, squandering of resources, losses and finally disruptive conflicts. This process can only be modified or suppressed through a very deep innovation and, in many cases, a stressful behavioral adaptation.

In economy, it has been described as "path dependence" (B. ARTHUR, 1994)

This is the specifically technical or behavioral aspect of a much more general random choice process described by E. ODUM.

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]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint