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

GROWTH 1)

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Functional and structural increase in an individual system or a population.

K. BERRIEN stated: "Growth may be viewed as structural modifications initiated by some "foreign" input permitting the acceptance of (more) maintenance inputs".

Accordingly:

"a. Emergent characteristics of systems are the necessary consequences of growth and attendant modifications.

"b. Because growth modifications are such as to permit the system to be maintained more efficiently, they can be viewed as adaptations.

"c. Growth is limited by adaptation limits and memories.

"d. Growth follows a "plan" embedded in substructures of the initial system modified by localized specialization" (1968, p.87).

According to K. BOULDING: "Some growth phenomena can be dealt within terms of relatively simple population models, the solution of which yields growth curves of single variables. At the more complex levels structural problems become dominant and the complex interelationships between growth and form are the focus of interest. All growth phenomena are sufficiently alike however to suggest that a general theory of growth is by no means an impossibility". (1956, p.13).

Forty years later, we still lack such a systemic theory!

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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