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

CONSTRUCT 3)

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A mental way of ordering a number of elements, observations or data in some manner coherent with previously structured knowledge.

In E.von GLASERSFELD words: "… constructs… are results of mental operations" (1988. p.4).

This does not mean that constructs are independent from what we call "reality", but only that they are something different from it. This is thus no idealist Berkeleyan proposition.

The concept of construct starts from the understanding that a simple incoherent collection of any kind of elements, observations or data would be useless for any purpose and that the observer is necessarily ordering them somehow. This "somehow" depends on an organizational closure process, i.e. of the internal physiological, psychical and mental (seemingly in that order) organization of the observer.

The physiological part has to see with the specific ways of sensorial perception, which impose by themselves constraints and thus, coherence (J.J. GIBSON, 1986). The process proceeds through psychical and mental ordering in the endocrine and nervous subsystems, which again implies specific ways of ordering.

So-called "facts" are elemental constructs, corresponding to something "out there". Memories, hypotheses, algorithms, models, theories, languages, etc… are more elaborated constructs.

Constructs gain social value through conversation and consensus. They are always falsifiable in POPPER's sense.

→ "Ontological skepticism".

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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