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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COMPLEXITY from noise principle 2)

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H. ATLAN explains:"These two opposite properties (i.e. redundancy and variety) appears both as obvious features of what is organization and therefore, a good theory must take them both into account in such a way that an optimal organization will appear as a kind of compromise between maximum order or redundancy and maximum disorder or complexity.

"From then on, it is possible to see how random perturbations can produce a change in organization by reducing the redundancy and increasing the complexity of a system, at least, up to a certain point, as long as there is enough redundancy to keep the system going.

"This is the so-called complexity from noise principle, at the root of the formal theory of self organization that I have worked out several years ago" (1972, p.28-30).

Equivalence between maximum order and redundancy, or maximum disorder and complexity is debatable. Maximum disorder is generally considered as a completely random state or behaviour of very numerous elements, which is complex only if one considers the massive necessity of information bits to describe it. Conversely redundancy is order only if order is defined as maximum homogeneity or uniformity. All this could lead to a serious semantic muddle.

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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