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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SYSTEM (Richly or poorly joined) 2)

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W.R. ASHBY states that a system may have more or less strong or weak internal interactions among its parts or subsystems (1960, chap.11).

A totally joined system would become at the same time clogged and blocked; if any element can communicate freely with any other at any time and in any way, no order can be defined. Curiously, the result is the same as in a collection of disordered elements (the case of the totally entropized isolated system – a semantic contradiction, since such a system does not possess anymore any feature).

Thus, a system can be functionally defined only if it is limitedly intra-connected, i.e. if its variety is limited by constraints, i.e., if some interrelations are not permitted.

Furthermore there seems to exist an optimum such as the system reaches at one moment the best adapted level of internal connection in relation to its functionality, while at the same time, maintaining the best possible adaptativeness. Such an optimum must however necessarily be transitional.

One could also speak of strongly or weakly intraconnected system to make more understandable the somewhat at times esoteric language of ASHBY.

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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