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

POPULATION 1)

1) The global set of individuals or elements of a same class, i.e. sharing defined characteristics.

A population is generally confined within a limited space, possibly with very different local densities.

While belonging to the same class, no individual is absolutely identical with any other: populations are generally polymorphic, within limits.

A population is not only synchronic, but also diachronic since the number of members may increase or decrease with time, as well as their repartition and global or local densities.

Populations correspond to a special type of systems, in which every element is directly and dominantly interconnected with the environment and only loosely and intermittently with other members of the population (see "Scattered system"). This type of systems does not generally possess clearly identifiable sub-systems.

2)"An aggregate of individuals conforming to a common definition, to which individuals are added (born) and substracted (die) and in which the age of the individual is a relevant and identifiable variable" (K. BOULDING, 1956, p.13)

BOULDING explains: "Birth" occurs when an item begins to conform to the definition which encloses the aggregation, and "death" when the item ceases to conform to the definition. A definition may be thought of as closed fence: everything inside the fence belongs to the defined population; birth consists in crossing the fence into the enclosure; death in crossing the fence out of the enclosure. The population concept thus defined is a perfectly general one, and applies not only to human or animal populations, but to populations of automobiles, poems, stars, dollars, ideas, or anything that is capable of definition" (1956, p.67).

In any system that can be described as a population, internal and external interactions can be considered in terms of competition, complementarity, parasitism or symbiosis whether the species consist of animals, commodities, social classes or molecules" (Ibid, p.13).

3) A generalized and more abstract definition of population is given by T.A. and W. MILLINGTON: "The whole set of items which have a common characteristic, which is subject of some sampling in the process of statistical analysis" 1971, p.182).

Along this line, populations can be sampled, i.e. an appropriate (and frequently numerically quite limited) subset can be studied for some specific characteristics, in view to obtain generalizations by the use of convenient statistical methods.

Samples are however referred to a specific moment in time. As a result, any dynamic inquiry needs various successive samplings to study temporal change affecting the population.

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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