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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NON – PRINCIPLES 2)3)

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The French biologist H. PRAT made a census of a number of negative principles which contributed or could contribute to open new horizons to 20th (and 21st) Century sciences:

"1. Principle of non-identity: In experimental sciences, identity does not exist (two objects or elements can never be identical)….A mitosis, for example, is never strictly equational. Ignoring this fact led to many persistent errors in the interpretation of animal and vegetal organogenesis"

"2. Principle of non-repetition: As the set of causes corresponding to an experience A can never be identically reproduced in an experience B, only a more or less great probability can exist for confirmation in B of the results obtained in A; but never an absolute certainty. The probability increases with the number of concording experiences, but never becomes infinite ".

"3. Principle of non-extrapolation: All laws and concepts that we formulate are only valid within given limits: those accessible to our observations on space, time energy, information scales. Beyond these limits we should not extrapolate ".

"4. Principle of non-independence: All elements and parameters in the universe are interdependent. Any modification of one, modifies in some measure (big or small) all the others".

"5. Principle of non-constancy: In the universe, nothing is absolute: there are no universal constants; nothing is totally invariant".

(This revolutionary statement leads its author to emphasize a totally abstracted formulation of E = mc, that should make it practically disembodied… and useless).

"6. Principle of non-limitation: No limit may be imposed to any magnitude in the universe, which is limitless in all the hyper-space scales: space, time, matter, energy and information" (1968, p.3-4).

While these ideas should be taken "cum grano salis", as "food for thought", it should be noted that other non-principles were formulated by HEISENBERG and EINSTEIN, as well as by the non-aristotelician Polish-American logician A. KORZYBSKI, the Austrian mathematician K. GÖDEL and the French philosopher G. BACHELARD… not forgetting PRIGOGINE's nonequilibrium thermodynamics. They are undoubtedly present in systemics, where "the whole is not merely the sum of the parts" and in cybernetics, where causality is not anymore lineal.

Somehow, non-principles are related to complexity, as we finally met it in our minds.

→ NO-, NON

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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