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 EXPLOSIONS 1)

← Back

Populations explosions are a result of a unilateral or strongly dominant positive feedback, which triggers a runaway event. This process normally ends in a crash.

Runaways happen when the supply of energy or aliments is growing in an unlimited fashion, until some critical threshold is crossed.

It can even happen in a more subtle way, as shown by the following experiment, described by L.B. SLOBODKIN: "If a population of green hydra is given a diet of water fleas the hydra proceed with their normal response to population growth and become smaller as individuals become more numerous. They become so small, in fact, that they are unable to eat the waterfleas at all and the entire population dies of starvation" (1968, p.153).

In short, the positive feedback tends to finally trigger a negative one, which may appear under the guise of starvation, a pandemy, a process of biological or behavioral (as for instance in lemmings) self-destruction.

One may wonder about the potential lessons for mankind in its present process of population explosion.

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]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint