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

SELF-ORGANIZATION (Conditions for) 1)

H. ATLAN states in the following way the conditions for self-organization:

"The initial redundancy must be high enough to start with, since it has the role of a potential for self-organization, to be reduced in the process.

"Some inertia must exist in the response of the system to random perturbations so that it is not going to be destroyed too quickly in order for the initial redundancy not to disappear right away. (A good example is that of liquid crystals and biological macromolecules where thermal noise can produce changes in conformation before it destroys the whole structure of the molecule, whereas the high repetitive order of crystals can exist only in one form and is completely destroyed almost at once when the "dose" of thermal noise – i.e. the temperature – reaches some threshold).

"Of course these are not sufficient conditions because the sufficient conditions have to do with specific forms of functional organization, i.e., with specific functions performed by the organized system, and giving a meaning to its organization" (1972).

In any case, as stated by M.B. HAWTON, self-organization becomes possible only if it initially has"… sufficient preorganization to run the first cycle(s) so as to generate the information which will be accumulated to organize future cycles. A machine can only become self-organizing through operation" (1974, p.87).

We are of course now burdened with the problem of preorganization. V. CSANYI introduced the useful concepts of autogenetic system precursors, autogenesis and zero-system, which shed some light on the subject. (1993)

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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