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

SIMPLICITY (Organized) 1)

← Back

The character of the deterministic motion of a single, or two interacting moving elements, or more generally of the interplay of two or three variables at most.

W. WEAVER (1948) coined three expressions to differentiate simplicity and complexity:

- Organized simplicity, simple, deterministic;

- Disorganized complexity, complex, random;

- Organized complexity, self-organizing, ergodic, chaotic.

Classical science, until the last decades of the 19th Century, based on deterministic models, discovered and explored organized simplicity, as for example in mechanics, optics or acoustics.

Disorganized complexity was then tackled by the newly introduced statistical methods, as for example in thermodynamics.

Organized complexity became under investigation only in the 20th Century and its study is still in full development.

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]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint