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

COMPLEXITY (Accumulative) 2)4)

← Back

C. HASKINS has observed that complexity in living beings and in insects societies grows out of accumulation (1946). In a way, this was already a basic tenet of E. HAECKEL's views of evolution with his fundamental biogenetic law: "Ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis". Evolution does not start at any time from scratch: it results from adding new and not contradictory characters to those already in existence. This means that complexity self-constructs from level to level. According to Haskins each higher social level of structures results of a more or less similar pattern. Social forms imply specific types of interactions among reciprocally compatible individuals. And once initiated, they tend necessarily to develop coherently (i.e. in a non-contradictory and functional way)

HASKINS considers that human social world similarly tends toward higher degrees of complexity and that this can be seen specially through the cultural evolution of human societies from simpler forms toward more and more differentiated and coherently organized ones.

→ Cross-level research; Priority of the simple; Recursivity; Supremacy of the complex; Zero System

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]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint