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

HOLISM (Law of Requisite) 1)2)

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M. MULEJ and S. KAJZER introduced the Law of Requisite Holism in 1998 (see T. ECIMOVIC et al., 2002)

The Law "demands the author/s of the definition of a system representing the object under their consideration and/or control to clearly state what part of attributes of the object is included into his/her/their system, being the mental picture of the object under consideration and/or control"(2002, sect. 4.1)

The authors add: "He/she/they must do his/ her/their best to fight oversimplification as well as too much complexity and complication, by using all available knowledge and skills as well as by ethics of interdependence"(Ibid)

This means that the holistic model must not leave anything significant outside, nor overburden the model with irrelevant elements.

Of course, the crux of the matter are the criteria to be used to focus the holistic model in this way. Moreover, a very serious problem is that the modeller may easily be unaware of the insufficiency of his/her knowledge or may hold a prejudiced view. The authors explains possible ways to produce a holistic model that be satisfactorily focused, covering the issue as a whole and including all significant relationships.

Other authors, as for example J. WARFIELD and R. CARDENAS, or H. LlNSTONE and I. MITROFF, and J. GHARAJEDAGHI have contributed interesting methodologies that should be used to construct models in accordance with the Law of Requisite Holism.

→Generic design; Unbounded Systems Thinking; Underconceptualization

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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