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.

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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.

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A defined class in a system of classification of objects, processes or relations.

J.A. GOGUEN and F. J. VARELA write: "The intuitive idea of a category is that it embodies some structure by exhibiting the class of all objects having that structure, together with all the structure preserving mappings or morphisms among them" (1979).

R. ROSEN introduced a systemic concept of "category", also different from the one traditional in philosophy, and more formal:

"… a category consists of the following data:

1. A collection of objects, which we shall design by A, A',…

2. A function assigning to each pair (A,A') of objects in the category, a set denoted by H(A,A'), the elements of which are called mappings or transformations. This set may be empty for some pairs (A,A').

If f H(A,A'), then we shall call the object A the domain of f; the object A' will be called the range of f." (1960, p.46)

ROSEN also introduced the concept of subcategory, within a previously defined category and stated "… the objects and mappings of a sub-category themselves comprise a category" (p.47).

The preceeding notions give the bases for a formally organized taxonomy of systems and subsystems, and has been introduced by ROSEN for the "Representation of biological systems".

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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