CONSTRAINTS (Self-generated)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 649 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Methodology or model |
Those constraints imposed on the system by its own activity .
G. ARMALAGOS writes: “As long as a virus has an effective mechanism for jumping from one person to another, it can afford to kill its victims” (1998, p.25).
If it however does kill too quickly, it limits severely its own expansion: “Gruesome pathogens such as Ebola are unlikely to cause a widespread epidemic because they sicken and kill so quickly that victims can easily be identified and isolated” (Ibid., p.24)
Historically, the same effect operated in a different way: After the “Black death” pest pandemics in Europe (1347-1352), successive resurgences of the disease killed less and less people, probably at least in part because the survivors of former epidemics offered a growing resistance to it and somehow transmitted it to their descendants.
The growing resistance of pests and pathogens to a number of our new 20th. Century medicines is probably another example.
More generally, new collective constraints emerge from the massive success of some innovation. The growing traffic problems resulting from the evermore massive use of cars is an example. This corresponds to J.van GIGCH's side or spill-over effects , or to the French sociologist R. BOUDON's perverse effects.
Such self-generated constraints are due to multiply in our expanding ecosystems and sociosystems , under the pressure of accelerating quantitative growth .