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

SYSTEM (Composite) 1)2)

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An almost homogeneous system composed of weakly interacting or non-interacting numerous elements, similar or pertaining to a reduced number of classes.

Such systems should better be named parasystems or quasi-systems, because they lack a number of properties characteristic of more integrated systems, as for example:

- they have no definite function

- they have no subsystems

- they are not autopoietic, nor autonomous

- they are generally quite homogeneous

The elements of the composite system are merely in contact, but normally not connected or only weakly connected. Furthermore, its behavior is not really integrative and it is not autonomous in the autopoietic sense, as it is not able to reproduce its elements, nor the characteristic interrelations among them.

As a result, it must suffer the impacts from its environment in a mostly passive way. However, it may present some characteristic global states or behaviors, as for example:

- self organized criticality

- spatial self-similarity

- percolation processes

- runaway processes.

Examples of composite systems are: heaps of sand, accumulations of snow on mountains, flowing fluids, stock markets, active geological zones, small ecological systems (as, for example, mono- or oligo-cultivation orchards or fields), and possibly star clusters.

In some former papers, P. BAK and collaborators used to denominate "dynamic systems", this class of systems which was not very satisfactory, because al/ classes of systems are dynamic.

In the above definition "homogeneous" means the opposite of "heterogeneous", which is a state of highly complex and integrated systems with many specific and differently functional parts.

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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