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

ORGANIZATION: A descriptive language 1)

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J.L.R. CHANDLER proposes the following four descriptive concepts relative to the behavior of any degree of organization:

Closure: a domain of discourse, a category, a system, an object, unity

Conformation: the components of the closure of a system, the internal patterns of the system, the relationships among the parts of the system, a three dimensional depiction of the internal description of the system, a specific geometric and algebraic description of components of the system

Concatenation: binding parts together, linking changes in the conformation, changes in the internal patterns of a system, the specific linkages between parts of the whole, dynamic processes of the system linking patterns to patterns

Cyclicity: a pattern of concatenations which sustain the system, the potential cyclic walks or pathways over the conformations of the system, the habitual behavior of the closure.

"These four concepts serve as the basis for a linguistic description of simple and complex material systems. In principle, each concept can be applied to the enumeration of each degree of organization…

"These four terms are interdependent with each other and must be defined sequentially" (1998, p. 20)

This last comment explains why some of these definitions are not given separately in the Encyclopedia.

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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