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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CONTROL SYSTEM (in living systems) 1)2)5)

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W. POWERS states: "Living organisms don't produce repeatable actions. They produce repeatable results"(1995, p.3)

He adds: "The theory of control systems,… shows us how a relatively simple system can manage to produce reliable and repeatable results in an environment that has a large component of unpredictability – in other words, in the real world".

And "If you start with the idea that a behaving system controls outcomes or results rather than the actions that produce them, you can invent control theory from scratch. The first thing you realize is that this can't be done just by creating reproducible actions. The same action will have different results depending on what I going on in the environment. What you want is some basically simple way to produce a given result that doesn't depend on being able to predict exactly what action will be needed to produce it" (Ibid).

This is a very important comment, as it brings us back to the bedrock of cybernetics.

It also leads directly to HOLLAND's genetic adaptive plan through rules and to "artificial life" devices.

Finally, it is equivalent to VENDRYES' concept of living systems, able to control their own relationship with their environment, i.e. autonomy

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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