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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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INVARIANCE (Time) 2)

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The invariance of the set of states of a system that do not change in time.

What may change is the presence of the system in one or another state. Even so, this is a quite theoretical state of affairs, based mainly on the hypothesis that the different states do not influence each other.

According to H. MARGENAU (quoted by A.D. HALL & R.E. FAGEN) the absence of time in the equations describing a system is the very essence of causality (in its strictly deterministic sense). It is the case for "a system completely specified by n variables x1,x2,…xn.. Then… the state of the system is uniquelely describable by a set of n numbers. To borrow terminology from physics, the set of all points in n-dimensions is called phase space" (1956, p.25).

This type of description becomes thus an algorithm with a well characterized content, even if it may correspond to a matrix of probabilities. (See "Markovian matrixes").

However, "When the constants of the set become functions of time, as in progressive segregation or systemization, the definition is no longer satisfied" (Ibid).

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
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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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