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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OPERATOR 2)

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"A transformation or transition rule mapping initial states upon subsequent states" (F. HEYLIGHEN, 1990a, p.426).

The operator determines "… a time-parametrized trajectory in the state space representing the states of the system at subsequent instants" (Ibid).

The concept of operator is close to the one of algorithm. An operator is a specific part of an algorithm. Its total or partial activation at some moment depends on the dynamics of the constraints.

"An operator corresponds to a distinction between the state before the operator was applied and the state afterwards" (Ibid).

In a recursive machine, as for instance a TURING machine, the operator is the significant element, not the input, which is merely the trigger. The input must however be "legible" by the operator.

The previous comment suggest interesting parallelism with human "operators".

J.L.LE MOIGNE advocates for the development of a specific notation for different types of systemic operators, as for example:

- the recursion operator, proposed by E. MORIN

- the distinction operator (G. SPENCER BROWN)

- the autonomy operator (F. VARELA)

- the combinators (H.B. CURRY)

He also mention the conservation symbols used by J. FORRESTER in his Systems Dynamics (1990, p.115).

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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