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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ORDER (Generative) and EVOLUTION 1)

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D. BOHM and F.D. PEAT discuss the meaning or generative order in relation to evolution. They write: "While the current neo-Darwinian theory is valid in its proper domain, it represents an abstraction from a much larger implicate and generative order, and its main significance is to be found in its relationship to this latter order" (1987, p.201).

This is an interesting hypothesis: Nothing is possible outside the basic generative order (for example biological life – at least of the kind we know – would be impossible in a universe wherein macromolecules could not be formed). In this sense, generative order is autopoietic. However, within the very wide reach of this order, creative variation is possible and the phase space of living systems can expand and finely divide. It ensues that evolution, while channeled, is and will necessarily be, a unfinished historic process.

Is this something that needs to be proved in the classical sense of scientific "proof"?

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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