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

COMMONS 1)4)

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Those resources considered of common anonymous ownership.

This very old notion was reintroduced and generalized by G. HARDIN in a famous paper (1968, p.1243).

In E. LASZLO words: "When the size and resources of the commons are limited, individual competition intensifies and, for a time, permits the enterprising actors to draw further profits. But eventually they exhaust the commons and bring about their own downfall" (1978, p.86)… and probably everyone's downfall.

As stated by W.W. HARMAN: "Microdecisions regarding utilization of resources… which are reasonable from the viewpoints of corporate management and stockholders, developers and local governments, result in macrodecisions of resource depletion, environmental degradation, urban crowding, which are unsatisfactory to society at large" (1972, p.87). This was considered a key issue by HARMAN in 1972: It still is and practically nothing is done to confront this challenge.

We have nowadays multiple examples of this problem at every level of human groups and it becomes now also a planetary one: The global interrelation between the ecosphere and the sociosphere could very well cross a threshold of total instability.

The commons, in process of exhaustion as sources, are also in process of saturation as sinks.

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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