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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TRANSFER (Inverse) 2)3)

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An implicit operation by which an observing and acting system attributes "some of its intrinsic traits… to the part of reality it succeeds in apprehending" (R. VALLÉE, 1990b, p.40).

VALLÉE who introduced the concept, stresses the deformations that the systems observation process as well as the decision one transmit to the objective situations.

He writes: "The theme of "inverse transfer" of intrinsic traits of the observing (and even deciding) system, somehow generalised, gives some elements of answer to the classical interrogation of the intelligibility of the world. If the world is considered sometimes intelligible, not without effort indeed ("Der Herr Gott is nicht bose aber raffiniert" wrote EINSTEIN), it may be partly due to the fact that our ways of perception, understood in the widest sense, eliminate all that does not fit our mind. Then through "inverse transfer" some of our intrinsic traits are attributed to the part of reality which we succeed in apprehending" (p.40).

As an example, our classical mathematics could modelize some chosen physical properties. However, to explain some others (for example the 3-bodies problem when it was recognized as a problem in its own right), new mathematics were needed and introduced, starting with POINCARÉ. Later on, important extensions of these mathematics could be used as a new tool to try to understand deterministic chaos in general.

It would be interesting to study specific cases of inverse transfer that may probably be observed:

- in superior animals, whose observation, decision and pragmatic operators are at variance with ours

- through cultural differences, in relation to MARUYAMA's mindscapes

- during the evolution of a same culture through time, for example in relation to the paradigmatic mutations described by Th. KUHN 1970).

- in psychologists, who adhere to different theories

- in individuals adepts of different ideologies.

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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