GROWTH (Explosive or Exponential)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 1485 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Methodology or model |
The characteristic of a growth phenomenon, process or rate constantly submitted to a positive feedback.
Any system affected by this type of growth is quicky running toward its destruction, because it is using up evermore growing quantities of some specific resource obtained from its environment, until the moment the resource becomes scarce and insufficient to maintain the rapidly growing structures of the system.
According to K. BOULDING's (himself an economist) barbed comment: “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can continue indefinitely in a finite world is either a madman or an economist” (1973, p.92).
As stated by J. MILSUM: “The basic growth process is of necessity escalatory or unstable, at least over a reasonable working range” (1968, p.27).
Such situations are very dangerous as they are generally not clearly perceived until the terminal runaway process is well on its way and cannot anymore be stopped. A dramatic collapse becomes then unavoidable.
This type of runaway growth is frequently observed in some physical phenomena, in ecology, in man-made disasters, in financial panics and in economics, as for example hyper-inflations.
Their early detection and avoidance could be one of the most important contribution of cybernetics and systems to practical activities in general.