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

SYSTEM (Concrete) 1)2)3)

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1a) "An aggregate of items that happen to be things (concrete items) and furthermore interrelated in such a way that the relations make some difference to the components" (M. BUNGE.1974, p.235).

1b) A set of things, together with the set of connections among them " (p.229).

2) A system whose "at least two elements are objects" (R.L. ACKOFF, 1972).

BUNGE equates "concrete" with "material" (1993, p.212). He also writes: "… some of the relations among the components of a concrete system are connections or links, i.e. every component of the system acts on or is acted upon by some other components of the same system" (BUNGE, 1974, p.235).

He also states: "On the other hand, a set of states of a thing and a collection of events, even if ordered, are not concrete systems" (1979, p.7).

And an "… equally pervasive feature of concrete systems is that they react on their environment, i.e. that their output is never nil (The so-called machines without output, studied in automata theory, are of course fictions)" (1979, p.25).

Correspondingly: "All concrete systems are physical entities, in that they possess energy a measure of changeability… However, some concrete systems are more than just physical entities, in the sense that the categories of physics are insufficient to account for them. For example, some are social systems" (p.45).

R.L. ACKOFF observes: "In concrete systems establishment of the existence and properties of elements and the nature of the relationships between them requires research with an empirical component in it. Such systems, therefore, are the subject of study of the so-called nonformal sciences" (Ibid).

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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