Ecology, Economy, and Systems: An Interconnected View

Posted on Dec 14, 2024 in Other subjects

The Macroscope

1. What is Ecology?

Ecology is the science that studies ecosystems. The word comes from the Greek oikos, meaning “house,” and logos, meaning “science.” It studies the relationships between living beings and the environment in which they live.

2. What are the Three Main Sources of Energy?

The three main sources of energy are:

• Solar radiation
• Internal energy of the Earth
• Gravity

3. What is the Most Important of the Three?

The most important source is solar radiation.

4. What are the Four Domains that Make up the Ecosystem?

The four domains are:

• Air (Atmosphere)
• Water (Hydrosphere)
• Earth (Lithosphere)
• Life (Biosphere)

5. What is Entropy?

Entropy refers to the energy degraded into dissipated heat.

6. How is the Energy Flow Through the Ecosystem?

The energy flow is irreversible and inexhaustible.

7. Of the Three Groups of Organisms Found in Nature:

• Producers: Green plants and aquatic plants; all organisms capable of photosynthesis, i.e., the production of organic matter from sunlight and carbon dioxide. They are called autotrophs.
• Consumers: Animals that feed on organic matter in the tissues of their prey. They are called heterotrophs.
• Decomposers: They feed on dead organisms or chemical substances dispersed in the environment.

8. What are the Three Ways to Lose Energy?

• By respiration
• By consumption
• By decomposition

9. Examples of Decomposers

Bacteria, algae, fungi, yeasts, insects, worms, mollusks, etc.

10. What is Dynamic Equilibrium?

Dynamic equilibrium occurs when a variation that is too steep in one direction is offset by the change of another variable, returning the balance to the system. The system’s structures are preserved despite the continued renewal of its elements.

11. What is Turnover?

Turnover is a dynamic renewal, i.e., recycling.

12. What Does the Word “Economy” Mean?

“Economy” has the same root as “ecology,” coming from oikos, meaning “house,” and nomos, meaning “rule.” Thus, it signifies the rule of government of a house. It is the art of managing assets to satisfy needs while avoiding unnecessary costs. According to Robbins, the economy is the study of human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have mutually exclusive applications.

13. What are the Stages Through Which Man Has Passed?

Stage 1: Conquest and control of fire.

Stage 2: Domestication of solar energy, thanks to the dominance of agriculture and the domestication of animals.

Stage 3: The emergence of tools and concentration of work in cities; the exchange appears, which takes place in an area that is the market.

Stage 4: Pre-industrial era, machines powered by natural elements. Here, the two main streams of the economy balance: energy and information flow, and cash flow.

Stage 5: Modern industrial society, characterized by the massive use of fossil fuels, division of labor, and the appearance of firms.

14. How is the Economic Engine?

It is an open system to the environment.

15. How Does the Cash Flow?

It flows in the opposite direction to energy.

16. What are the Operators?

Operators are centers of decision. The two main players are producers and consumers. Then there are financial institutions (banks), the government (state), and external entities (foreign).

17. What do the Operators Do?

They act as centers of decision, i.e., they make choices and exercise powers. They are able to control and direct the flow of energy and money.

18. How Does the Outside Act?

It acts through disruption.

19. Of the Three Indicators that Serve to Regulate the Economy:

• Prices
• Employment
• Trade Balance

20. What is a Recession?

A recession is when the flow of money slows down relative to energy. Surpluses appear, and there is progressively less money with respect to the goods offered in the market, creating a vicious cycle that can lead to the arrest of the economic machine.

21. What is Inflation?

Inflation is the acceleration of cash flow in relation to the flow of energy, i.e., money in circulation grows, and the value of money falls. It also enters into a vicious cycle, but in an uncontrolled manner.

22. What is the Foundation of Ecology?

The irreversible flow of solar energy in unlimited quantity and a permanent recycling of materials.

23. What is the Foundation of the Economy?

The irreversible flow of fossil energy from a limited supply, and the irreversible displacement of material from a reservoir of non-renewable resources.

24. What is a City?

A city is the hub of a vast network of exchanges and communication.

25. What is Storage? How is it Classified?

Storages are the reservoirs of the city. They are distinguished by their use: energy, materials, or information.

26. What are the Administrative and Financial Bodies?

They are agencies for the regulation of economic and social balances.

27. Ideal Conditions for Development in a Business

High population density and a labor market.

28. What is a Company?

A company is a social agency that sets in motion the flows of energy and money running through the circuits of the economic system. It is also any activity that culminates in the sale of a product or service in the consumer goods market or production.

29. What are the Two Main Functions of a Company?

One is individual, and the other is at the level of society. The first is the production of goods to meet the needs of people, and the second is to create wealth, thus raising the standard of living of a country’s population.

30. What is Needed to Run a Business?

An organization composed of specialized departments and communication networks, in addition to factors of production: labor, capital, energy, materials, and information.

31. What is Labor?

Labor is the power provided by workers.

32. What is Capital?

Capital refers to financial resources and production equipment.

33. What are Energy and Materials?

They are the flow of fossil fuels that power machines and the flow of raw materials used for manufacturing.

34. What is Information?

Information is the know-how, the intangible assets resulting from the experience of the company’s members and previously accumulated knowledge.

35. What is the Role of the Manager?

The manager must choose the business objectives and provide the means to achieve them, setting the company’s objectives based on the living environment.

36. What are the Main Objectives of a Company?

Improved productivity, increased goods and services produced, maintenance of market position, and maintenance of the social utility of the company, i.e., its role as an agent of transformation of society. All these objectives are integrated into a global one: to maximize the company’s benefit.

37. What are the Constraints of the Environment?

The limitations are social, financial, industrial, commercial, and administrative.

38. How to Describe the Management Function?

It is written as a loop that goes from the objectives to decisions, from decisions to actions, and from actions to further decisions.

39. What is the Long-Term Strategy of a Company?

To maintain balanced growth and stability.

40. What Does the Body Encompass?

It encompasses complexity and interdependence in an integral whole in which the variety of links is more important than the items themselves.

41. What Does “Homeostasis” Mean?

“Homeostasis” means to remain constant.

42. What are the Functions of the Cell?

The cell retains the upper body structure, regulates and controls metabolic functions, grows, reproduces, and dies. It maintains its internal organization against the natural tendency to disorder.

43. What is the Cell?

The cell is a self-regulatory system, a power transformer, capable at any moment of balancing its production based on domestic consumption and available energy.

44. How are the Cell and the Body Connected?

By two functions: breathing and feeding.

45. What is Breathing?

Breathing is a combustion in oxygen which allows the cell to extract the energy it needs from outside elements.

46. What is the Main Fuel of the Cell?

Glucose.

47. What is Hemoglobin?

Hemoglobin carries oxygen from the lungs to tissues.

48. Basics Found in a System

• Energy
• Flows
• Communication networks
• Catalysts and process agents
• Restoration of balance
• Stability
• Growth
• Evolution
• Concept of system that interconnects all others

49. What is Meant by “Macroscope”?

It refers to the systems approach, a methodology that gathers and organizes information with a view to more effective action.

50. What About Making the Systems Approach?

It tries to cover all the elements of the system and their interactions and interdependencies. This is to segregate general principles that can be applied from one system to another.

51. Some Features of the Systemic Approach

• Tops and covers the cybernetic approach, whose aim is the study of regulation in living beings and machines.
• Different from the general systems theory of Bertalanffy, as this was a mathematical language to encompass all systems found in nature.
• Different from systems analysis, as this is only a tool of the systemic approach.
• Different from a systematic approach that addresses problems sequentially.

52. Stages of Cybernetics

• 1940s: Transition from machine to organism, displaying the notions of feedback and purpose.
• 1950s: Transition from organism to machine, introducing notions of memory, learning, and adaptive phenomena.
• 1960s: Extending cybernetics and systems theory to society and ecology.

53. Wiener and Bigelow on Intelligent Behavior

They refer to intelligent behavior in machines as being based on experience and anticipating the future.

54. Diseases that Affect Machines

When friction is reduced, the system goes into uncontrollable oscillations, a phenomenon that also occurs in humans.

55. How to Control a Purposive Action?

It can be controlled by the flow of information to form a closed loop to evaluate the effects of actions and adapt future conduct based on past performance.

56. What is a Negative Feedback Loop?

It is a circular loop of information necessary to correct any action.

57. Main Tool for Addressing System Complexity

The computer.

58. What is a Real-Time Machine?

A machine capable of processing vital information as it arrives.

59. Purpose of Industrial Dynamics

To consider the business as cybernetic systems to simulate their behavior.

60. What is Cybernetics?

Cybernetics is the discipline that studies regulation and communication in living organisms and machines built by man. It comes from the word kybernetes, meaning “pilot” or “rudder,” the same root as “government,” which means the art of managing and driving highly complex systems.

61. What is a System?

A system is a set of elements in dynamic interaction, organized on the basis of an objective.

62. What is an Open System?

An open system is in constant contact with its environment, i.e., it exchanges energy, and the environment releases entropy (used energy).

63. Level of Entropy in an Open System

It is relatively low, i.e., the organization is conserved. Open systems can decrease entropy and even evolve into more complex states.

64. What is a Closed System?

A closed system does not exchange energy or information with its environment.

65. Important Notions of Complexity

• Variety
• Interaction of the elements

66. Characteristics of Complexity

• A complex system has a variety of components that are organized hierarchically.
• Levels and elements are linked by a variety of links.
• Interactions between elements of complex systems are particular, i.e., nonlinear interactions.
• The effects of simple linear interactions can be described mathematically, multiplied by constant variables.

67. Why Characterize Complex Systems?

They are characterized by the emergence of new properties and resistance to changes.

68. What Makes up a System?

A structural aspect and a functional aspect.

69. Explain the Two Aspects

Structural: This is the organization in space of the system components (spatial organization).

Functional: This is time-dependent processes (temporal organization).

70. Main Structural Features of Systems

• Limit: Defines the boundaries and separates the outside world.
• Items or components: They are listed and gathered into categories.
• Deposits: Where the elements meet and where energy, information, and materials are stored.
• Communication network: Enables the exchange of energy and information.

71. Main Functional Features of Systems

• Energy flow of information or material: Circulates in the tanks and is expressed as amounts per unit of time. They raise or lower the level of deposits and circulate in communications networks.
• Valves: Control the flow of the various flows. They are decision centers that receive and transform information into action.
• Delay: Resulting from the different speeds of movement of flows.
• Information loops or feedback loops: Play a crucial role in the behavior of a system, combining the effects of deposits, delays, valves, and flow.

72. What are Positive Feedback Loops?

They are changing the dynamics of a system (growth and evolution). They lead to divergent behavior, to an indefinite expansion. A loop left to itself can only lead to the destruction of the system.

73. What are Negative Feedback Loops?

They are the loops that lead to regulation and stability. They lead to adaptive or purposive behavior. Any variation to the plus implies a correction to the minus.

74. What Determines the Behavior of Systems?

It depends on two types of variables: flow variables and state variables.

75. Explain Flow and State Variables

Flow variables express the flow over a certain length of time; they are time-dependent.

State variables indicate the accumulation over time of a given quantity, expressing the result of integration.

76. What is the Analytical Approach?

It reduces systems to their constituent parts to understand the types of interaction between them and to deduce general laws.

77. What Does the Systems Approach Do?

It considers the whole system, its complexity, and its dynamics.

78. Differences Between Analytical and Systemic Approaches

Analytical:

• Focuses on the elements
• Considers the nature of interactions
• Relies on the accuracy of the details
• Modifies one variable at a time
• The phenomena considered are reversible
• Validation of facts is done by experimental evidence in the context of a theory
• Accurate but hardly used models in stock
• Effective when relationships are weak or nonexistent
• Take a learning disciplines
• Action programmed in detail
• Knowledge of the details, ill-defined objectives

Systemic:

• Focuses on the interactions of the elements
• Considers the effects of interactions
• Based on an overall perception
• Amendment to groups of variables simultaneously
• Integrates duration and irreversibility
• Validation of facts is done by comparing the performance of the model with reality
• Models lax but usable in decision
• Effective when strong interactions
• Take a multidisciplinary teaching
• Action by objectives
• Knowledge of goals, fuzzy details

79. Three Main Features of Classical Thought

• Its concepts have been formed in the image of the solid.
• Irreversible time is not taken into account; only reversible time phenomena are considered.
• The only way of explaining phenomena is linear causality.

80. Tools Used by the Systems Approach

Modeling and simulation.

81. What is the Role of Models?

They try to gather the elements of the system to make assumptions about its overall performance, taking into account the interdependence of factors.

82. What is the Role of Simulation?

It tries to make a living model, based on a model established in a previous analysis.

83. Three Main Stages of Studying Complex Systems

System analysis, modeling, and simulation.

84. What is Systems Analysis?

Defining the limits of the system to model, identifying the elements and their links, then identifying the flow variables, state, loops, etc.

85. What is Modeling?

Constructing a model from data of systems analysis, making a scheme of causal relationships between the elements, then expressing the equations descriptive of the interactions in a programming language. Simulation studies the temporal behavior of a system and makes groups of variables vary simultaneously.

86. What is Simulation?

Simulation is an approximation of reality that does not give an exact solution to a problem. The simulation results should be compared with what we know of reality. It lets us compare the effects of a large number of variables on the overall operation of a system.

87. What is Intuition?

It is a tool that helps decision-making.

88. What is a Balance of Power?

It is a static equilibrium, i.e., it cannot be changed except by a discontinuous change in the relationship between the forces.

89. What is a Balance of Flows?

It is a dynamic equilibrium, resulting from the adjustment of the rates of multiple streams flowing through a meter. It can adapt through adjustments in terms of disturbances.

90. What Does it Mean that a System is Homeostatic?

It is an open system that maintains its structure by means of multiple dynamic equilibria. These systems are opposed to change by all means at their disposal. Homeostatic system behavior is unpredictable, i.e., they have completely unexpected results.

91. Ten Commandments of the Systems Approach

• Keep the variety: To remain stable, it is necessary to preserve variety.
• Do not open control loops: Sometimes loops are cut for short-term stabilization. It is believed to act on the causes to improve the impact, but this is not so.
• Find the points of amplification: Allows you to trigger controlled amplification or inhibition, i.e., it acts on earnings.
• Restore the balance in decentralization: The restoration of balance makes the detection of differences where they occur so corrective action takes place in a decentralized manner.
• Know how to maintain restrictions: To maintain a given behavior, it is necessary to maintain some restrictions to prevent the operating system from drifting into undesirable or dangerous states.
• Differentiate to integrate better: Any integration is based on a previous differentiation. Unity in diversity is creative; increasing complexity leads to higher levels of organization.
• To evolve, let it be attacked: A system cannot evolve if it is attacked by the outside world. Any stiffness is opposed to a favorable evolution.
• Prefer detailed programming objectives: This differs from servo control in machines, because automatic control should provide for all disturbances, while servo control adapts to the complex and dynamically corrects for differences. The important thing is to reach the goal.
• Learn to use energy-control: The information issued by a decision center can multiply. We must distinguish between force energy and energy control. Force energy is, for example, the power line, while power control is translated by the action of the thermostat; it is information.
• Respect the response times: Duration integrates complex systems into their organization. Each system has a response time of its own.