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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UNFOLDMENT 1)

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The gradual development of a system's internal order.

In complex systems, since their very genesis, there is an implicit (or in D. BOHM's terminology "implicate") order, which becomes revealed as the system grows. Viewed from this approach, as stated by F. DAVID PEAT: "The universe is sustained through an act of creative unfoldment in which no order is absolutely fixed, but is able to respond to an ever-changing context" (1987, p.215).

This is a very general property of biological, social or conceptual systems. An interesting example is the development of a musical fugue.

Unfoldment is a possibility implicit in organizational closure.

However, unfoldment is never total, since it depends on the external constraints that the system will meet during its development.

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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