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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DESCRIPTION THROUGH HIERARCHICAL LEVELS 3)

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H. PATTEE states: "The scientific description of events would, in fact, get nowhere in nature's maze of complexity unless there were repeated resimplifications which we call hierarchical levels of description" (1972, p.37).

He adds: "In fact every process of classification implies the grouping under a single class of objects which, according to a more detailed classification, fell in more than one class" (Ibid).

While "description" is a mental artifact, it need not be arbitrary, since it is related to levels of action. We describe, for example social interrelations between plants, animals or men, putting into mental brackets the physiological, biochemical or physical levels of action, but this does not mean that we ignore their existence and fundamental importance. Moreover, we more or less clearly perceive organizational analogies between these levels. An outstanding example are the cross level hypotheses of J. MILLER in his "Living Systems".

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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