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

UBIQUITY (Conceptual) 1)2)3)

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The very general validity attributed to some concepts and models.

This new meaning for the term "ubiquity" has been proposed by M. BUCHANAN in a recent book (2000). He thus described the application of some concepts and models to a very wide variety of situations or processes.

He gives as an example the self-organized criticality model. This model has been used in many types of situations where a system is on the brink of some considerable sudden change or catastrophic crisis.

Examples are:

- the distribution of forest fires in Australia and the U.S.

- the distribution of measles epidemics on the Faroe Island in the North Atlantic

- the unstable situation in Europe in 1914 and the assessination of Arch.Franz Ferdinand of Habsburg which triggered World War I (Per BAK, 2000, p. 56-57)

Self organized criticality is only one of the new models of systemic character that appeared during the second half of the 20th C. in the course of a deep change of the basic paradigm about what scientific research does, and what is meant by "explanation"

It should be noted that in former centuries other concepts or models have also been ubiquitous, as for example mechanistic determinism in the 19 C. and first half of the 20 C..

Moreover, old concepts and models are not necessarily abandoned, but only reconsidered and put in a different perspective when new ones are introduced.

→ Catastrophe theory; Chaos; Cycle; Cyclogenesis; Discontinuity; Powerlaws; Stability (Dynamic)

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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