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.

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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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INFON 1)3)

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"A postulated general information particle". S. BRIER, in his review of T. TONER's book on "Information and Meaning" discussed the proposed new term (1998, p. 82)

He writes: "The Infon is defined very much along the lines of how originally in the sciences the conceptualization of human work has reduced to form the general concept of energy in nature".

Reflecting on the progressive use, extension and deepening concept of energy, for comparison, BRIER observes that this was a productive, but quite strenuous process because it took place within the mechanistic framework of 19 Century science. He adds similar comments about the difficult progress of Planck's quantum during the 20 Century.

It is clear that the different forms of information transmission (languages, the semio-chemicals (another neologism!) electronic devices have a basic common feature…whose deeper meaning could probably need many more years to be better understood.

For now BRIER is questioning " the fruitfulness of the objective informational approach to give us a framework that can solve our problems of understanding evolution, intelligence, consciousness, man-machine interface and cooporation, plus the enlightment of our understanding of signification and information processing in general" (p.85)

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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