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 THINKING: Some critical appraisals 1)2)3)

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In his well known essay on "The Rise of Systems Theory"(1978), R. LILIENFELD was very skeptical about the practical use of systems theory. He wrote: "No evidence that systems theory has been used to achieve the solution of any substantive problem in any field whatsoever has appeared "(p. 192)

LILIENFELD critique was directed obviously at those scientists and technicians who thought that systems theory offered a cheap short cut for the solution of specific problems in specialized trades: a kind of magic bullet to avoid slow and painstaking research in the traditional way

He did however missed the real point, which is that systems's concepts and models offer the base for

1- a transdisciplinarian language that fosters the capacity of reciprocal understanding between specialists

2- a needed complement for an integrated view of complex systems, as they exist and maintain themselves in their environment

F. CAPRA gives the following examples related to this second aspect: "It could be argued even then that the understanding of living organisms as energetically open but organizationally closed systems, the recognition of feedbacks as the essential mechanisms of homeostasis, and the cybernetic models of neural processes- to name just three examples that were well established at the time- represented major advances in the scientific understanding of life "(1997, p. 78)

In fact, traditional research in specialized area are complemented by systemic thinking

The necessarily reductionnist research in specific processes (as for ex. the workings of enzymes) are in no way contradictory to a global view of the living system

The part becomes integrated in the whole, but must still be also researched as a part in itself

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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