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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DISTINCTION (Primary) 2)3)

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The most elemental distinction that can be made. D. HERBST writes: "When a distinction is made, a boundary comes into being together with the inside and the outside of a form. What is generated in this way is a triadeic co-genetic unit consisting of the inside, the outside and the distinction made, which is represented by the boundary. At this stage, we have nothing more than a form in an empty space"(1993, p. 29)

Examples are a line (or a circle) in an empty two-dimensional surface, or plane.

Herbst adds: "In its most general form, what has become generated…is a unit consisting of not less than three elements "(Ibid)

This is in fact the basic triadic unit, related in different ways to Ch.S. PEIRCE's "thirdness" and to SPENCER-BROWN's laws of form.

Any distinction is also an operator in the meaning developed by R. VALLEE (1995)

→ Dyad; Network; Topology; Triad; Triadic relation; Triadicity

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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