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

INFORMATION: its material media 1)5)

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JM. RODRIGUEZ DELGADO points out the necessity to avoid confusing information with the various types of media used to transmit it: "..paper and ink can be used as media to carry non specific messages of quite different significations" (1992, p.162). He adds: "… the functions carrying messages must be distinguished… from mental manifestations. Thus, for example, the eyes and the optical nerves are needed in order to see, but they work only as non specific carriers and transducers of visual forms, which are in effect recognized by the occipital lobe and other cerebral regions" (Ibid).

In the same way, an electromagnetic wave may carry visual or auditive messages of very numerous different types, which can, or not, be decoded by a given receptor. To understand a message in Russian, one needs to know Russian, and not merely to hear correctly the sounds or see the cyrillic characters.

It is thus obvious that the understanding of information is not merely a matter of registering the medium, but requires the learning of the specific codes.

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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