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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ORGANISMIC SET 2)4)

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"A mathematical entity that has properties common to both biological and social organisms" (N. RASHEVSKY, 1967, p.21).

RASHEVSKY, who introduced the concept, gives the following examples: "A social organism is a set of individuals who are the elements of the set. A multicellular biological organism is a set of cells; and… a unicellular organism may be considered as a set of genes….

"Moreover, in all organismic sets, that is, in both biological and social organisms, the elements of the set replicate or multiply…

And: "An organismic set of order n is a set whose elements are organismic sets of order n – 1".

RASHEVSKY finally claims that "The theory of organismic sets forms a sort of conceptual superstructure over biology and sociology" (p.21, 22, 27).

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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