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

DISTRIBUTED MEANING (Principle of) 2)3)

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The complete characteristics or meaning of an element in a set of interconnected elements cannot be completely guessed from that single element.

This principle is a direct consequence of the system's nature, being the interrelations and constraints as important as the proper qualities of any element.

The principle is very general. For example, in any word, composed of sounds and syllabes, "the acoustic cues for each sound (are) distributed across the entire word" (Ph. LIEBERMAN, 1997).

In the same way, the shades of meaning of a word in a sentence can be wholly perceived only within the sentence, and even in some cases within the whole context.

The same is true of cultural elements, whose more significant meaning can be captured only within a social behavior, as for example a ritual.

→Memory (Distributed)

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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