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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SYSTEMS REPRESENTATION 2)

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Any way to construct a model of a system.

Really complex systems can practically be represented only at the price of gross simplification in some coarse homomorphic form, using for example an aggregation mode. A good example are the models used in Systems Dynamics.

This is not to disparage such models, which are the best available for practical purposes, but only to take a clear view of their limitations.

Only what M. BUNGE calls systems with a "denumerable composition" as "a molecule or an industrial plant" (1979, p.16-7) can be adequately represented by a graph or its equivalent matrix, or the corresponding set of equations.

BUNGE acknowledges that: "Obviously neither the graph nor the matrix representation of a system suffices for all purposes. It represets only the composition, structure and environment of a system with neglect of its dynamics. A more complete representation can only be obtained by setting up a full fledged dynamical theory incorporating and expanding the information contained in the graph or the matrix representation… namely the state space representation (p.19-20).

Even this supposes hypotheses about the system, derived from a more general frame of reference.

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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