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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INFERENCE 1)3)4)

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"The production of one or more beliefs or assumptions by one or more other beliefs or assumptions" (R.L. ACKOFF & F.E. EMERY, 1972, p.113)

But, to begin with, wherefrom came the first beliefs or assumptions? Cultural nurturing seems to play an important role in the ways"… signs denote what they do on the three principles of resemblance, contiguity and causality" (C.S. PEIRCE, in 1991, p.80).

In any case, the recursive definition given by ACKOFF and EMERY is justified as follows by these authors: "… there is a set of beliefs and assumptions that the subject is willing initially to accept as true. These beliefs and assumptions contain only elements of the system and are expressible consistently with the formation rules. These rules constitutes the premises of the system. In a deductive system these premises may be axioms or postulates; in an inductive system they may be a set of accepted facts or observations" (Ibid).

This implies an important caveat for any systems modelization: Inference is related to habit formation and habit formation leads to uncritical attitudes.

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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