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

CONTROL OF and CONTROL FOR 1)2)4)

← Back

Control, as a natural process, is non-volitive: it is basically the automatic result of reciprocal constraints between elements, parts or whole systems. It is obvious, for example, in co-evolution.

In contrast, human controls are mainly purposeful: the idea is to maintain a system within some specific parameters, or to the contrary, to enforce some new parameters, unfortunately sometimes arbitrary or even downright nonsustainable, in order to change the system's behavior in a way desired by the operator and supposedly advantageous.

When inside and outside contexts (alike) are not duly taken into account, the results of volitive and purposeful control can easily be erratic, negative or even wholly disastrous (Ch. FRANÇOIS, 1983).

R. ESPEJO states: "… control is not a unilateral enforcement of criteria of performance, but rather the maintenance of a dynamic stability in the interactions among multiple viewpoints with reference to tacitly accepted, more or less flexible, criteria of performance" (1988, p.143).

A. RAPOPORT made the following somewhat controversial but quite significative comment: "… control of portions of the world become desirable not only for the purpose of exploiting the environment but also for the purpose of understanding it" (1972, p.18).

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