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

ASSIMILATION 1)

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Integration of external factors into a system's structure.

J.W. SUTHERLAND considers assimilation as the "complementary pole" of accomodation, which is merely a temporary or more or less lasting and reversible adaptation of the system to external variations.

The concept is somewhat difficult to conciliate with autopoiesis and organizational closure. Any system can assimilate only that which is compatible with its basic nature. Besides, assimilation seems possible only when the system still possess a high degree of redundancy (see ageing, order from noise).

Assimilation within the individual system, is not the mechanism, or at least the main mechanism, of evolution. This last comment commands however two caveats:

- The acquisition of new habits may well predispose in either a positive or negative way, the individuals of some species to the transmission of dormant or new traits.

- In the human species, mental assimilation of newly acquired concepts, percepts and symbolic associations seems to be directly transmissible through communication, something that KORZYBSKI called totalization through time-binding (1950b).

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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