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

PROGRAM 1)2)

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1. "A set of code signs that indicate the actions to be performed by a living system or an artefact in order to achieve its purpose" (J.Z. YOUNG, 1974, p.297).

J.Z. YOUNG adds: "In living systems, the aim is the continuation of the individual and/or his programs" (Ibid).

Programs are ordered in the time dimension: their execution is sequential. Moreover, at least parts of the program are recurrent, which leads to autopoiesis and hypercycles.

The future development of a complex program is somehow implicit complex systems are self-organizing. This is true only – at least until now – for living systems. It seems however that self-organization starting from a set of rules is now becoming a feature of some artifacts. See: "Connection machine".

In living systems the combinatorics implicit in the program is unavoidedly limited, even if it may be very great. This may be setting limits to learning and even to the lifespan in living systems.

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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