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

CONSENSUS AND COMPLEXITY UNDERSTANDING 1)4)

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Stafford BEER writes:

Science offers the means:

- to measure and manipulate complexity through mathematics

- to design complex systems through general systems theory

- to devise viable organizations through cybernetics

- to work effectively with people through behavioral science

- to apply all this to practical affairs through operational research".

The knowledge and the skills exist, but… "Society proceeds instead by consensus& The consensus simplifies, distorts and makes trivial the real problems of complexification which are inherently too difficult for all to understand.

"Thus we come to manage an oversimplified model of the world that exists only in the mind of the consensus, instead of the real world out there.

"This mismatch lies at the root of our incompetence" (1976, p.381/2).

Consensus is a neutral tool in itself. While it is the only practical way to reach common understanding in human systems and thus to be able to insure autopoiesis or innovation in them, it does not by itself guarantee satisfactory results: consensus may be disastrous, since the needs of a nonlinear complex system are frequently counter-intuitive and conflictive with common sense (generally addict to linear ways of thought).

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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