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

MULTI-PERSPECTIVISM 1)2)4)

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The most dangerous challenge that mankind will have to meet during the 21 C. is the growing confusion in all kinds of issues, worldwide.

A very sketchy sampling of these is as follows:

- the anarchic growth of megalopolis and the resulting numerous and intractable problems of most varied kinds

- the growingly complex ecological problems, turning evermore global (atmosphereic pollution, water crisis, possible climate change, waste accumulation, etc.)

- the worldwide massive demographic explosion, possibly starting now to turn into an implosion

- terrorism, anarchy, warfare and massive corruption spreading in all continents

- growing hostility between some cultures

- foreign debt and financial crisis in many countries

All of these issues are known, but merely in a superficial ill-connected way. Their interrelations are ignored or ill understood.

This situation is now emerging in the consciousness of a growing number of people and systemic multi-perspective models are starting to appear.

H. BENKING, for instance, advocates the need to make a wide-embracing "know-map", in a coherently organized fashion, in order to become able to find the specific information we need (but within context!), and even possibly to discover more precisely what to look for". In this way, every "player" would know better where he is located in the general frame of events, with whom to start a conversation and eventually what to do and how to do it.

Benking adds that we do not only need a "good map", but also a compass to orient us when using the map and find (or become oneself a good pilot in the cybernetic sense.

Other important proposers of multiperspectivism are:

- A. JUDGE, general secretary of the Union of International Associations (Brussels) who publishes an Encyclopedia about world problems and world resources to solve or manage them: http://www.uia.org/uiadocs/aadocdia.htm

- The Club of Rome interconnected World Models, based on Forrester's Systems Dynamics

- J.de ROSNAY, who proposed his "Macroscope" as an integrative and also multiperspective view of wholes

- the "Systems Reasoning Paradigm of the Information Image and Nature" of M. BACEWICZ (Polish Systems Society at Wroclaw Technological University)

- B.H. Banathy, J. WARFIELD, and I. MITROFF and H. LINSTONE's work on Design are also important contributions

→ Eco-cube/know map; Panorama; Scholasticism; Underconceptualization

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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