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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DETERMINISM (Ontic) 3)

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Until now, we have used the word "determinism" in an epistemic sense: "A theory was said to be deterministic if all the distinctions made within that theory were causally conserved. Ontic determinism then should mean that we would infer from the determinism of our theory (e.g. classical mechanics) that the real world to which the theory referred were also deterministic (e.g. the world of LAPLACE)" (F. HEYLIGHEN, 1989, p. 379).

Conversely, concepts like simultaneity in relativistic terms, bifurcations, emergence or chaotic attractors lead us to a kind of ontological agnosticism.

F. HEYLIGHEN asks: "Is causality "real" or "objective", and does it exist independently of the observer (ontic interpretation)? Or is it merely a cognitive construct, an association between subjective ideas or experiences (epistemic interpretation)" (p.362).

"We would , hence, tend to conclude that the question of whether the world is (ontically) deterministic is a meaningless one, to which all possible answers are either trivial or unprovable in principle" (p.379).

→ Ontological skepticism

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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