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

OPERATIONALISM

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A philosophical doctrine holding that the meaning of a concept can be defined only by a set of actual experimental operations.

In its most radical interpretation, operationalism demands that such operations be measurable. From a systemic view point, this seems to be too restrictive, as it prohibits not only metaphors or analogies but altogether seemingly qualitative models as for example topological ones.

It is also quite difficult to see how the traditional frame of reference of thought in general -logic for instance- can be redefined in operationalism terms.

But the unending-and many times doubtful, if not contradictory-meanderings of all kinds of philosophies undoubtly explains and justify the need to find a stronger bedrock for thought.

Accordingly the basic tenet of operationalism is the need to find a way to eliminate all concepts that cannot be connected to some empirical reality. This exclusion apply mainly to those "ghostly" internal psychological concepts whose meaning is perpetually controversial because of their more or less imaginary, or limitedly cultural, or imprecise character.

The main root of operationalism is in Ch.S. PEIRCE (1839-1914) original version of pragmatism. However, its principal proponent has been the american physicist P.W BRIDGMAN (1882-1961)

H. MATURANA and F. VARELA's views about the ways of cognition and its autopoietic character ("Santiago theory") reset the whole of operationalism in a new light: Cognition may never become really measurable, but at least it is becoming more rationally- and "operationally" – understandable

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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