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

MEDIUM 1)

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A region in space-time endowed with relative permanence where observable events take place.

"Observable" events are such for living systems endowed with specific capacity of perception. As observed by J.J. GIBSON, each medium induces a defined potential specifically adapted to possible behavior for a specific living system.

See: "Affordance".

Water induces specific behavior in a fish, and different ones in a swimming terrestrial mammal, or in a marine bird, like a penguin. And air induces a type of behavior in a flying bird, another in a butterfly, and another still in an aircraft's pilot. (1986, p.16-19).

A medium should be distinguished from an environment, which already implies a clear partition between some system and the non-system which whom it interrelates: such environment does not necessarily includes the whole medium.

Besides, as noted by E. MORIN: "The medium is not a stable setting, but a region where events surge"(1972, p.9).

A dynamically structured medium would be a field (see Ch. LAVILLE describing biological mechanisms considered from the atom to the living systems, 1950).

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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