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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REDUCTIONISM AND CAUSALITY 1)3)

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In his critique of the second and the third precept of DESCARTES "Discourse on the method", J.L.LE MOIGNE states: "Reductionism implies somehow causality and conversely" (1990a, p.19).

While DESCARTES suggested in his third precept to start "with objects the simplest and easiest to know" and "ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex" (1947, p.175), he did not explain how to do this.

He did not seem to be aware that the application of his second precept destroys these composed objects because their breakdown in simple objects, as he recommends, eliminates their numerous internal relations, keeping only some privileged one.

Moreover, it becomes less and less obvious, for example in physics with the case of the quarks, that "smaller" is also "simpler and easiest to know".

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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