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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KNOWLEDGE: a pragmatic and operative view 1)5)

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It would be quite irresponsible to broach such a philosophical problem as knowledge in a short and superficial way, while it occupies the best minds since 25 centuries.

For our purpose, "knowledge" is that which allows complex systems to sustain themselves and to act.

From this pragmatic viewpoint, B. ZEIGLER states:

"A system "knows about "a class of objects, or relations, if it has an internal representation for the class which enables it to operate on objects in this class and to communicate with others about such operations.

"Thus, if a system knows about x, a class of objects or of relations on objects, it is able to use an internal representation of the class in at least the following ways: receive information about the class, generate elements in the class, recognize members of the class and discriminate them from other class members, answer questions about the class, and take into account information about changes in the class members" (1986, p.15).

Such an internal representation is a set of more or less elaborated models, acquired through a process of learning. As shown by numerous experiments, somewhat similar models seem to be already present under rudimentary forms even in inferior animals.

This leaves open questions about the degree of consciousness that must necessarily go paired with knowledge.

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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