International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

"One of two populations of self-duplicating organisms, if permitted to expand with Malthusian growth without selective control, will drive the other out of the realm" (H. ODUM, 1983, p.53).

H. ODUM, who enounces the principle, writes: "The one with the slightly better reproductive performance is self-amplifying and the discrepancy between the two stocks increases. This is a well-established phenomenon in laboratory experimentation where other controls are removed… This tendency for runaway competitive exclusion of one part of a network is a fearsome ever present danger against which all surviving systems must be protected by organizing influences" (Ibid).

In other words, the more complex a supersystem, the more dynamically stable are the participant systems. Eliminating seemingly competing systems is thus dangerous, specially because the remaining system can very well run away toward self-destruction through a positive feedback which encounters no more resistance.

A similar competitive exclusion mechanism has been proposed by ethologists as expressed by J.N. LOCKE: "If a brain mechanism has limited capacity, it may be preeempted by early stimulation and rendered insensitive to later stimulation of a different type" (1994, p.441).

This explains for instance the life predominance of the mother language and the subsequent difficulties in learning other languages.

A similar idea had already been enounced by P. COLINVAUX in 1973 (p.337): "Stable populations of two or more species cannot continuously occupy the same niche". And even earlier, in 1934, the russian biologist G.F. GAUSE had formulated it (becaming known as GAUSE's Principle). By experiences on two different species of Paramecium put in competition, GAUSE showed that one of the species always finally died out. (1934)

While in more recent experiences with Drosophila seemed to infirm the principle in some cases, it remains however of very general validity.

Within some well specified limits, it may also prove to be applicable more generally to social situations. For example e-mail could conceivably eliminate finally common postal written or typed mail. Such extensions of the principle should however be handled with care.