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

SYSTEMS INQUIRY 1)3)4)

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"The full scope of activities by which we attempt to construct systems that are adequate models of some aspect of reality" (G. KLIR, 1991, p.77).

KLIR comments: "The purpose of systems inquiry is to understand some phenomenon of reality, to make adequate predictions or retrodictions, to learn how to control the phenomenon in any desirable way, and to utilize all these capabilities for various ends"…

"We can say that in both systems inquiry and systems design, we "construct systems that are adequate models of" something" (Ibid).

There is of course the problem to define what we understand, as observers, by "adequate", and as possible actors as "desirable". A long experience demonstrates that opinions and viewpoints vary considerably on these aspects (in time as well as in space).

For more rigor about the first one, we should expand as much as possible our knowledge of the phenomenon, situation and system, using for instance WARFIELD's Interpretive Structural Modeling and/or KLIR's Reconstructability Analysis. As to the desirability aspect, we should furthermore "observe the observers", in von FOERSTER's terms, or emulate ACKOFF's fables, to better understand our own and others' motivations.

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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