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

MAPPING 2)

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The process of coupling two sets in a one-one correspondence.

St. BEER gives the very simple example of creating such a one-one correspondence between the 26 letters of the alphabet and the numbers 1 to 26 (1968, p.107).

While purely abstract mapping may be isomorphic, when we try to model concrete systems, "… in practice the mapping will be homomorphic – able to preserve some structure, but committed to losing some information. Thus our account of nature is 'true', but defective, and our account of such characteristics of nature as causation and law will change with the linguistic mapping we choose" (p.121).

Any model we do construct of any part of our universe is in some sense a mapping, and necessarily a merely homomorphic one, and: "The variety of the image system obtained with a homomorphic mapping is, of course, smaller than the original one" (R. VALLÉE, 1993b, p.75). It is essential for our conceptual (and possibly even mental) sanity to understand this and consequently, to relativize our knowledge.

Mappings are useful for the exploration of the interconnections and eventual transformations of the contents of the set of the interrelated items.

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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