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

UNIVERSE 1)3)

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The totality of which an observer is aware of.

J. L. DESTOUCHES writes: "Any system is a whole always contained in another whole called "Universe" or environment" (1947, p.196).

Of course, the "universe" selected by the observer at one moment is less than the total universe that he/she could observe, and this in turn is less than the total existing universe.

Any observer has "blindspots". Nobody is capable to observe more than a very small part of reality, of which many aspects remain hidden to any of us.

A very important aspect of systemic training is covering the need to understand our perceptive and conceptual boundaries and to know the permanent "invisibility" (G.de ZEEUW) for us of many features within the real world.

As emphasized by the French economist J. FOURASTIÉ, there is something worse than ignorance and it is ignorance of our ignorance.

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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