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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CONTEXT 1)2)

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1. The environment of a fact, datum, situation, word, information, etc… that helps its understanding.

2."A metamessage which classifies the elementary signal" (G. BATESON, 1967, p.260).

A sufficient context should include the effective interactions that could alter the meaning of any registered observation.

G. BATESON states: "Either we must discard the notion of "context", or we retain this notion and, with it, accept the hierarchic series – stimulus, context of stimulus, context of context of stimulus, etc. This series can be spelled out in the form of a hierarchy of logical types as follows:

"Stimulus is an elementary Signal, internal or external

"Context of stimulus is a metamessage which classifies the elementary signal.

"Context of context of stimulus is a metametamessage which classifies the metamessage.

"And so on" (Ibid).

A kind of recursive algorithmic perceptual and conceptual Russian matrioshka, so to say.

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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