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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CLUMPERS and SPLITIERS 1)3)

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This amusing expression about two quite different types of minds (New Scientist, Nr. 2211, November 6th, 1999) surely deserves being included in this work.

"Clumpers" would be the authors of grand unified philosophical or scientific theories. Newton or Darwin would be paradigmatic examples. As to "splitters", the enormous majority of researchers in any discipline, they would be the hardworking, more or less anonymous toilers, painstakingly collecting myriads of small data or reduced specific models, which would one day allow for some breathtaking synthesis by some "clumper"… as for example the treasure of specific data obtained by numerous chemists, which were finally ordered by Mendeleiev, the clumper, in his famous periodic chart.

Systemists tend to be clumpers, but it should be very risky for them to ignore the laborious works of the splitters. As to the splitters, their work gather more sense and significance within the mental frame of already existing wide embracing theories… even if their discoveries may well lead to some shattering conceptual revolution.

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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