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

OPERON 5)

A biological formal unit of control.

This concept has been introduced by the French biologists F. JACOB and J. MONOD, to explain dynamic coordination in biological systems.

While related to the neural net model, significant differences are pointed out by R. ROSEN: "It must be stressed that the operon is a purely formal unit. It is not a physical particle, nor is it composed of such particles. It cannot be isolated physically from the cell to which it belongs. It is thus not like a neuron in a neural net" (1979, p.182).

This opinion may now seem unduly restrictive in the light of the discovery of "homeoboxes" (very similar in mammals as well as in insects), i.e. groups of genes on specific chromosomes, which act as coordinated and sequential organizers of the whole living system (W. GEHRING, 1995, p.58-64).

Operons correspond thus to the potential properties of this kind of global basic templates, which remained astoundingly stable during eons of evolution.

Operons and homeoboxes introduce the intriguing question of the possible existence of a still more general systemic organizing principle active through different ways in systems of all kinds.

(For more discussion of this difficult notion, see references)

Autogenetic system precursor; Meme; Replication and Zero System

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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