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

QUALITATIVE LAWS 1)2)3)

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Qualitative laws are generalizations of similar, but non-measurable properties. This is the basic mental process that leads to fundamentally new discoveries.

M. BODEN cites as an example: "The chemist GLAUBER (who) clarified the qualitative distinction between acids and alcalis, and between acids and bases (Bases include both alcalis and metals). He did so by classifying the experimental observations – including some produced in experiments he designed himself in a logically coherent way. He discovered, for instance, that every acid reacts with every alcali to form a salt" (1990, p. 197-8).

H. SIMON and colleagues have designed a program named GLAUBER that modelizes the discovery of qualitative laws "by classifying things according to their observable properties" (Ibid).

Qualitative laws are frequently the first step to quantitative ones. A good example is MENDEL's quantification of inheritance laws, that were already more or less known in qualitative terms by plants and animals empirical breeders.

In a more formal domain, R. THOM observed that topology is basically a qualitative branch of mathematics. Qualitative mathematical structures are interesting, even if not measurable (1991, p.79).

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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