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

OPERATION 2)

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"A basic process that applies to an operand and yields a transform" (K. KRIPPENDORFF, 1986, p.54).

KRIPPENDORFF gives as examples "the multiplication of two numbers, driving a nail with a hammer, baking" (Ibid).

R. ACKOFF gives the following descriptive definition of the term: "Loosely put, a set of acts can be said to constitute an operation if each act is necessary for the occurence of a desired outcome and if these acts are interdependent. The nature of this interdependence can be precisely defined. The relevant outcome involved in an operation can each be defined by a set of properties which can be treated as variables" (1960, p.2).

ACKOFF wrote this in 1960. One wonders if this quite deterministic attitude, proper at the time of operations research could still be maintained nowadays in view of what we are learning from chaos theory (even in man-managed systems), particularly in systems with various and more or less independent initial conditions.

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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