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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VITALISM 1)3)5)

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"The theory that life is maintained by some special force that cannot be explained by the principles of physics and chemistry" (J.Z. YOUNG, 1974, p.300).

As noted by YOUNG, this theory was closely related to DRIESCH's entelechy.

It was a purely verbalist pseudo-explanation, but it had the merit to consider living beings specificity and to trigger a controversy which led in a first step to BERTALANFFYand WOODGER's organicism, and from there to the concept of system, which emphasized the importance of internal interrelations and organization.

Later on, MATURANA and VARELA's organizational closure, and EIGEN's Hypercycle introduced a clearer explanation for the maintenance of organization in living systems. On the other hand, PRIGOGINE showed that a correct extension of thermodynamics to open systems, especially those faraway from equilibrium, could constitute a physical explanation of the evolution of life.

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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