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

CONNECTANCE 2)4)

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"A measure of system connectedness based upon the mean number of nonzero interaction terms per compartmment of the system under consideration" (T.F.S. ALLEN & T.B. STARR, 1982, p.264).

This definition should be completed by the following comment of W.D. GROSSMANN and K.E.F. WATT in reference to the evermore intense interactions of all types between human individuals and groups : "Excessively intense or frequent causal connections between systems or systems subcomponents can foster rapid propagation of shock waves, or internal perturbations within systems. At present nobody can tell to what degree connectivity is tolerable on a global scale…

"What are the preconditions for avoiding the present high degree of interactions becoming threatening?" (1992, p.9).

This clearly systemic problem, that also can be observed in animal populations, has been formerly studied by J.B. CALHOUN from the slightly different angle of the relation between population density and social pathology by overcrowding (1962 and 1971).

→ "Connectivity", a near synonym.

CONNECTANCE 2)

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The percentages of links, between the elements in a network.

The concept also appeared recently in ecology (A. FLOOD, 2001, p. 30-33). N. MARTINEZ introduced the "constant-connectance hypothesis according to which "a particular balance of food-web complexity exists in nature… – between everything eating everything, and everything not eating everything, and everything eating nothing (see R. WILLIAMS and N. MARTINEZ, 2000) "

Connectance is related to the global stability or instability of the network and is thus characteristic of its emerging complexity.

FLOOD comments: "Distributions of species, the World Wide Web and metabolic networks all seem to show robust self-organization phenomena. It is the global features of such webs that matter, not the individual characteristics of the units that make them up "(p. 33)

In ecological networks "a species (may go) extinct because of the removal of a closely connected neighbour"(Ibid.)

This can be obviously happen in economic and in social networks.

→ Graphs; Power laws; Small world

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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