International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

1) All distinctions are invariant.

2) "All causes of an event are predictable if the states of the system and the behavior laws are known" (K. KORNWACHS & W.von LUCADOU – 1989, p.135).

The principle may be considered as the basic axiom of classical determinism. However according to KORNWACHS and von LUCADOU: "The principle of determinism implies that every event has its special causes. There is no event within the system without any cause" (Ibid).

F. HEYLIGHEN explores some of the foundations of the causality principle in the following way:

"Objects are supposed to have an invariant identity. During their movement they do not disappear or merge with other objects, and no objects are created out of the void or by the breaking up of existing objects. In other words, the distinction between object and background is always conserved

"The attribution of a predicate to an object is objective, and all observers are supposed to agree on it. Hence, the distinction between having a property or not having it is also invariant.

"The same apply to propositions that are either true or false, independently of the observer, and to the time ordering of two events, which are either simultaneous, or the one precedes the other one. Hence, propositional and temporal distinctions are also invariant.

"Again the same principle applies to dynamical constraints: A transition is either allowed or not allowed, without any ambiguity.

"Finally the principle applies to state trajectories: Two trajectories starting at distinct states at a certain instant will always remain distinct and have always been distinct".

In conclusion, all distinctions between objects, between predicates, between different trajectories, between truth and falsity, between past and future, between possible and impossible, are invariant; they remain the same for all times and for all observers. This absolute distinction conservation can be taken to be the defining characteristic of the classical way of representation.

"… each of the nonclassical representation can be characterized by the nonconservation of a particular type of distinctions" (1990 a, p.434-5).

These basically ontological assumptions are very old in the occidental philosophical and intellectual tradition, being already present in Plato (The myth of the Cavern). It has been historically very useful, because it permitted the establishment of the basic sciences of macroscopic simple processes. But it has been a hindrance to the understanding of complexity and the consensual nature of knowledge.

HEYLIGHEN concludes: "… the classical representations are the result of a completely closed observation cycle. The state of the system can be perfectly prepared by the observer, the evolution of prepared states in the system is completely causal, the new states of the system can be perfectly detected, and the observer is supposed to possess all information and knowledge needed to predict or explain the detected states of the system (this is the assumption of perfect, "unbounded" rationality)" (p.435).

This causalism is practically a metaphysical stance and has been the dominant paradigm of classical science since NEWTON. It implies an overly simplifying ontological determinism, which is now in process of deep reconsideration. (see f. ex. M. BUNGE's work – 1979).