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

ARCHETYPE 1)

The sum of interrelated characters, accumulated through time by former systems, which defines the basic structures and functions of a new system of the same kind.

Any archetype is a more or less abstract model, whose concept is Platonician in nature.

G. BATESON calls it a "genotype" and defines it as a "body of memories", as he refers himself basically to biological systems.(1973, p.287)

Nobody has ever given a definitive and rigorous explanation about the way archetypes become established. As to BATESON's "body of memories", F. DAVID PEAT connects in a hypothetical way Jungian psychoanalytical archetypes with the hierarchic structure of the brain which is "…often pictured as containing a series of evolutionary levels beginning with its primitive reptilian brain stem and working upward to the higher primate functions of the cortex. In addition, there are probably a number of evolutionary remnants present in the chemical pathways of the various neurotransmitters, peptides and other chemicals used in the brain" and while "such arguments contain more speculation than facts (they) suggest that the unconscious mind arises out from a more primitive layer of the brain which is not yet capable of secreting "higher" conscious thought" (1988, p.107).

It is anyhow undeniable that dogs engender dogs and cats, cats; and that such is the basement of identity and organizational closure in systems.

(Ideal-type)

As explained by C. WADDINGTON, through his concept of epigenetic landscape.(1977), evolutive change of an archetype does never occur freely in a vacuum.

As a result of its archetypical inheritance, any organism is endowed with limited (even if within a considerable potential for adaptability)possibilities of development from its autogenesis on, and is thus able to construct itself only through a pre-constrained morphogenesis, in interaction with its environment.

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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