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.

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CONSTRAINTS: (Internal and external) 1)2)3)

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Any system is submitted to two different classes of constraints, i.e. internal constraints which organize its necessary heterogeneity, and external ones, which result from the more or less stable or unstable conditions in its environment.

The internal ones are defined by the central control subsystem (see stellar type system), which ensures autopoiesis on the base of the formerly registered evolutive traits corresponding to the system's class. These constraints are, for example, genetic, normative, statutory through by-laws, etc…

The external constraints are the present limitations imposed upon the system by its environment. They may well be at variance with the historical or evolutive constraints already registered within the system and thus be a source of serious problems.

I.V. BLAUBERG, V.N. SADOVSKY & E.G. YUDIN insist rightly on the importance of this feature: "Experience shows that many complex problems of today are not solved at all or are solved incorrectly or ineffectively only because they have been wrongly formulated, because not all the essential aspects of the… constraints imposed on its solution have been taken into account" (1977, p.262).

This is also a result of the "isolated" or "closed" system fallacy, leading to study the system only from inside, in a kind of aseptic vacuum.

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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