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

NON-ARISTOTELICIAN THINKING 3)4)

← Back

A. KORZYBSKI, who introduced what he called non-aristotelician thinking wrote: "The… non-aristotelician system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of "identity", which denial cannot be denied without imposing the burden of impossible proof on the person who denies the denial. If we start, for instance, with a statement that 'a word is not the object spoken about', and someone tries to deny that, he would have to produce and actual physical object which would be the word… This general denial of the 'is' identity gives the main fundamental non-aristotelician premise… The status of negative premises is much more important and secure to start with than that of the positive 'is' of identity, found in the aristotelician system, but easily shown to be false, and involving important delusional factors.

"Any map or language, to be of maximum usefulness, should, in structure be similar to the structure of the empirical world. Likewise, from the point of view of a theory of sanity, any system of language should, in structure, be similar to the structure of our nervous system. It is easily shown that the aristotelician system differs structurally from these minimal requirements, and that the non-aristotelician system is in accordance with them.

"This fact turns out to be of psychophysiological importance." (1950, p. 10-11).

KORZYBSKI insistently recommends training in no-identification as a way to protect psychological and mental sanity and gives numerous practical ways to do it. He views abusive identification as the root of most psychological and socio-political problems.

→ map-territory relation; nonidentity principle; self-reference; structural differential; time-binding.

Autopoiesis and organizational closure are obviously non-aristotelician concepts. So are most modern scientific theories related to complex systems. (See "Non – no").

KORZYBSKI's fundamental work on non-aristotelician concepts is undoubtedly a corner stone for general systemics.

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]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint