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

KNOWLEDGE (Construction of) 3)

The construction of knowledge is basically the acquisition of perceptive and conceptual invariances, "… with which to explore, order, and predict experience" (E von GLASERSFELD, 1976, p.116).

According to von GLASERSFELD: "If we accept the notion that rational knowledge involves the generation and use of invariances and rules, we cannot help asking how these invariances are generated and what they concern" (p.119). This is the "prime mover" concept of constructivism.

The subject was also broached early by J. PIAGET, who wrote in his "Epistémologie génétique": "Knowledge should not be conceived as pre-determined, neither within the internal structures of the subject, as they result from an effective and continuous construction, nor in the pre-existent characters of the object, since they become known only through the necessary mediation of these structures" (1970, p.5).

He also stated: "Cognitive processes appear then simultaneously as a result of the organic self-regulation of which they reflect the basic mechanisms, and as the most differentiated organs of that regulation within the interactions with the environment" (1967, as quoted by I. PRIGOGINE, 1973 b).

It is somewhat difficult to harmonize these views with the autopoietic view of the observer endowed with perceptual and conceptual organizational closure. This compiler believes that the physiological and nervous capacity to construct knowledge is innate, i.e. organizationally closed, but that it gives the subject the potential for learning and, through learning, create a perceptual and conceptual structure that ends up more and more autopoietic. Such a view is consistent with the progressive stabilization – and eventual sclerosis – of personality and worldview.

From a practical viewpoint M. DODDS and G. JAROS make the following distinctions: "Information is descriptive; it is contained in answers to questions that begin with such words as What, Which, Who, How many, When and Where. Knowledge is instructive; it is conveyed by answers to How-to questions. Understanding is explanatory, it is transmitted by answers to Why questions… (while) understanding presupposes knowledge and information… information presupposes neither knowledge nor understanding" (1994).

This seems quite extreme. Information presupposes at least some frames of references if it is to be more than pure data.

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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