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

ECOLOGICAL TRAP 1)2)4)

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Any situation in which a population perturbs its environment to the point of being unable to survive.

G. VICKERS, who introduced the expression, explains it as follows: "A population in a favourable but unfilled habitat normally multiplies at a constant rate until it meets or breeds limitations which slow and in time arrest its growth. It may then stabilize, at or below its maximum, in the same or an altered form, with oscillations of less or greater amplitude; or it may even disappear, because in its period of expansion it has either unfitted itself for life in a limited environment or unfitted its environment to support even a limited population" (1967, p.61).

This is a much more subtle and adequate formulation of the old Malthusian principle. There is probably nothing more important for mankind in all system science than this nugget of ecological wisdom.

→ Overcrowding; Undercrowding

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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