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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.

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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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ANTAGONISM PRINCIPLE 2)

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"Every system results from two antagonistic forces mutually binded" (S.LE PEUTREC & M. COURANT, 1994, p. 1550)

The principle was originally proposed in France by S. LUPASCO (who constructed a "logic of contradiction" – 1947): "It is antagonism, i.e. the coexistence of forces that attract o repel each other, or conflict with this attraction, that constitutes the fundamental mechanism, sine qua non of the physico-chemical objects, with more or less strong domination of some of them over the others… It is the nucleus where the antagonistic forces become most strongly equilibrated that constitutes the most resistant system, the one… most difficult to disintegrate" (1972, p.100)

Under this somewhat philosophical guise, it is easy to recognize C. LAVILLE's, or K. DE GREENE's, or D. Mc NEIL's views about interacting fields, or vortexes, or toroids, or H. SABELLI's theory of processes, all of which are basically dynamic.

LUPASCO, significantly, used the words "attract" and "attraction", long before attractors became a pass-word in so many systemic models.

In systems, we may observe the antagonism principle, for instance in environment-system antagonism, or inside of a system, the construction-destruction antagonism.

According to LUPASCO, the principle is rooted in a reflexive combination of the 2 Principle of thermodynamics, that prescribes the increase of entropy, and PAULI's exclusion principle. LUPASCO gives as examples the development of an embryo, or the shaping of a hurricane; still another important research on the subject has been d'ARCY W. THOMPSON's on "Growth and Form"(1916)

LUPASCO also stated that "the antagonism principle appears…as the formation principle of any system, as well as the bedrock of systems logics"(1982)

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

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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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