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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FORECAST (Conditions of) 1)3)

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Anticipation of events supposes a knowledge of former causal sequences and of the general (i.e. environmental) conditions of their occurence. Moreover, two more or less complementary hypotheses are needed:

- that we really know all the relevant conditions in which former causal sequences were produced;

- that no new factor wiII appear

This would do for dynamically stable systems.

Still, we can never be sure that some instability threshold will not be crossed and/or that bifurcations will not take place, leading to dissipative structuration (i.e. emergence of "something" different) or to chaos (appearance of one or more unsuspected alternate courses).

Forecasts are most generally based on logical deduction. However, as noted by E. JANTSCH: "Logical deduction is always linear and partial by its very nature, since it tends to isolate a single aspect of reality" (1975, p.203). As a result, traditional ways of forecasting are of dubious value (and in many cases little more than a mirror for wishful thinking). Even more sophisticated ones are still far from being to tally trustworthy.

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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