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 as a NETWORK (The) 1)2)

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According to CH. DECHERT: "Natural systems such as communities or ecological systems may perhaps be reduced to the resultant of probabilistic interaction on the basis of the behavioral programs inherent in each component" (1968, p. 119).

It would seem that we need to bridge the gap between individual behavior and global one by something more than probabilistic interactions. At least, these last would have to be somehow stabilized through rules of interaction. Such rules may be intrinsic because the components characteristics allow for some interrelations and exclude others. The thus defined constraints establish the future autopoietic nature of the system (see for example von FOERSTER magnets experiment).

In the same vein, cellular automata are constructed from standard elements evolving within a characterized space, through defined rules.

DECHERT observes: "In artifactual systems, the principle of integration is either external, or insofar as such systems are self-regulating or self-organizing, internal and localized" (Ibid).

A system self-generated as a network should be first self-organizing and later on self-regulating: i.e. it constructs its own internal determinism, by progressive reciprocal emergence of self-generated constraints.

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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