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

ISOLATION and REPRODUCIBILITY 1)

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According to N. PEGUIRON: "The isolation (of processes in order to study them) is used to show the specificity of the effects resulting from a cause: it is thus the basic instrument for seeking reproducibility. This act, when performed, implies the supposition that the essence of the phenomenon which is studied is retained; it thus restricts the field of investigation to the isolated systems: the properties of a (connected) system, basically resulting of its interactions with its environment totally escape from it" (1989, p.10).

Accordingly, the well known "… et ceteris paribus" principle, generally implicit, is usable only in order to obtain abstractions that can be applied to monocausal and repetitive situations.

PEGUIRON adds: "But there is something worse: If pushed to its extreme limit, the isolation process is an abstraction which is not only completely impossible to perform practically, but, should it be, would not let anyone to account for the phenomena, as we observe them" (Ibid).

It must be however recognized that, without the isolation (and basically reductionnist) method, it would not have been possible to start the upbuilding of modern science and, 350 years later, finally tackle complexity.

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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