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

MAN AS A PREDATOR 1)4)

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Man is obviously and by far the most accomplished predator in this planet.

He lives off the animal and the vegetal world on a massive scale, as no past or present other species has ever done.

He has become a planetary parasite, much more than a commensal or symbiont, and the most important and global accelerator of entropy in the whole ecosphere.

He is also living off the geological spare boxes of fossil energies and raw materials, sending enormous quantities of waste into planetary sinks that are becoming less and less able to cope with such a massive and in many case un-recyclable flow.

In fact, he is using the planet as a gigantic commons in the meaning of Garrett HARDIN (1968) and not giving any sufficient heed to the disquieting signs of the negative consequences of his ways.

It is quite probable that the global survival of the man-planet system will become the main problem during the 21 century.

→ Predatory behavior

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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