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

CIRCULARITY 1)2)3)

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Character of any self-repeating process. In order to take the time-dimension in account it would be more advisable to speak of "spirality".

Circularity is the result of feedbacks, specially the cyclical ones, corresponding to alternative positive and negative action, or on-and-off processes.

The circular process is essentially self-referential and basic for recursivity. It is generally functional and tends to generate either an algorithm, or a structure.

A degree of (frequently hidden) circularity is unavoidable in reasoning: St. KAUFFMAN, quoting W.V. QUINE, considers that "no hypothesis confronts the "world" alone. Instead, it confronts the world as part of an entire worldview of linked hypotheses plus statements about the experimental situation. Given a negative experimental result, something must be rejected. Either some hypothesis is wrong, or a description of the experimental situation is incorrect. But, as Quine pointed out, the choice of which hypotesis to reject is a free one. … Different choices of which hypothesis to reject impinge on the whole web of hypotheses and laws. To maintain coherence in that web, we typically choose to salvage a central circularly interdefined cluster of hypotheses" (1993, p.17).

This situation appeared repetitively in science since the nineteenth Century: Non-euclidean geometries, corpuscular and ondulatory theories of light propagation, quanta, relativity, chaos, etc…

As to recursivity, it corresponds to von FOERSTER's "Eigen-" concept, and to conceptual closure.

R. GLANVILLE observed that circularity is of utmost importance in conversation in G. PASK's sense, because it is :"… the basis for understanding, for the world as we (are) now seeing;it, and for our seeing it" (1993, p.53).

Circularity is thus in no way to be confused with vicious circles. Particularly in systemic semantics, this dictionary uses circularity in a positive way to induce a kind of intra-dialogue in the user's mind by criss-crossing through the whole semantic field.

In correspondence with organizational closure, circularity is also a characteristic of numerous natural processes and systems, specially biological and ecological ones, as a result of the complex interplay of multiple interconnected feedbacks.

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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