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.

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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 (Observation) 2)3)

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Observation process operated by a system on itself and on its environment.

The observation operator, traduced into a mathematical formalism created by R. VALLÉE (1951a, p.1350-1; and b, p.1428-9; 1987c, p.460-2; 1995, p.35-58 and 71-82) is used to define the observation limits characteristic of an observing system.

R. VALLÉE, who introduced the concept, states: "The object considered here is the very evolution of the system and its environment which cannot logically be separated, an evolution which is described by function x : t > x(t) where t represents an instant. The distorted and impoverished image of x, which the system perceives, is function y: f>y(t): being understood that, at instant ty(t), what the system believes is x(t), representing the pair constituted by the state at instant t, of the system and the state, at instant t, of its environment" (1990, p.39).

It emerges from this that what the system believes it knows is in fact an imperfect model of the objective situation. It is, in VALLÉE's terms a case of "epistemological subjectivity".

A system may have various observation operators, corresponding to different interrelated subsystemic functions. VALLÉE describes the rules of observational interactions between 2 or more observation operators (1995, p.37-8) by combining a memorization operator, a decisional operator and an acting (or effecting) operator. This set describes globally in mathematical terms all possible interactions between the system and its environment, leading to what VALLÉE calls the "epistemo-praxeological loop". Interestingly, he observes that he thus reformulates the basic epistemological meaning of PLATO's Cave.

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Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

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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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