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.

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MALTHUS "LAW" 1)2)4)

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According to Thomas MALTHUS, British economist (1766-1834), any population tends to grow limitlessly – and sometimes in an exponential way – until it reaches the upper limit of the available resources, mainly food. This may lead to catastrophic population crashes.

This is not really a "law", as frequently stated. In the case of human populations it has never been rigorously established and is widely doubted and criticized. It implies various hidden assumptions.

First, it could be true only for a system living in an isolated environment, i.e. for a population unable to colonize new territories. This could or course become the case for the human population in global terms on this planet.

Secondly, and again in the case of human populations, it does not take in account technical progress, which repeatedly allowed for new and better use of existing resources.

Thirdly, it is not evident that human population should necessarily grow forever. Leaving apart the possibility of massive pandemics (which could be considered a natural "malthusian" mechanism), the most recent trends in human population growth seem to indicate that there is a natural regulation mechanism at work: Human population explosions could be a transitional phenomenon, as in more and more countries, birth rate seems to decline, as well as death rate, in relation to material development.

In short, the final validity of the Malthusian model has not, until now, be either proved or disproved for the global human population on a planet whose resources are anyhow limited. It could be considered a caveat.

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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