LEVEL-SPECIFIC PRINCIPLES 2)3)
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Our study of nature led us to the discovery – quite recent – that no level of complexity can be totally understood at the lower levels.
In P. ANDERSON's words: " Psychology is not applied Biology, nor is Biology applied Chemistry" (1972)
To cross from one level to a more complex one we need in each case a principle that prescribes a specific way of organization at that level.
For example the organization of the cell cannot be explained merely by the rules of chemical valencies resumed in MENDELEIEV's periodic table of elements.
However principles at each level seem to be somehow intertwined in a more general principle of complexification as for example P. CORNING's synergetic hypothesis, or HAKEN's power laws or slaving principle, or van GIGCH's recursive meta-control.
In one or another way similar principles are to be found in all of the disciplines which study more or less organized complexity, as for example ecology or climatology.
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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