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

EPIGENESIS 1)2)

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The progressive structural elaboration of a system produced by the interplay of some rules within a specified environment.

Epigenesis as a concept originated in biology, more than two centuries ago (K. WOLFF, 1767, as quoted by J. CASTI, 1990, p.137). "It means that all of the adult organism is present in codified, rather than actual, form in all fertilized eggs in all species… The difficulty with WOLFF's theory is that it says nothing about how the set of instructions in the fertilized egg becomes translated into the final adult form" (p.138).

This problem has beeen finally tackled in the second half of this century and seems nearing its solution.

In 1967, St. KAUFFMAN, as quoted by W. Mc CULLOCH, proposed that: "… a random net of neurons, each listening to two neurons, and each speaking to two, and the sixteen Boolean functions tossed into the neurons at random, would form a good model of epigenesis. These nets must exhibit recurrent behavior sequences called state cycles. KAUFFMAN found that with two inputs per element, nets typically do have very short stable state cycles, and very few state cycles" (1974, p.14).

This implies that such systems tend toward organizational closure. There is some analogy with the progressive stabilization of ASHBY's homeostat.

Moreover, epigenesis is a no-return trip. (see hereafter).

→ Autogenesis; autopoiesis; Equipotentiality; Structuration (Dissipative); Zero-system

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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