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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FUNCTION CONSTRUCTION 1)2)4)

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The synthesis of a higher level function through interactions between elemental units.

J. ERCEAU AND J. FERBER explain that "… elementary units show specific behaviors that do not necessarily coincide with subfunctions of the desired function. This latter will emerge from interactions between elementary units" (see eco-behavior), and, expressing that this is a bottom-up approach… "The system does organize itself in order to react adequately in every case, which makes it flexible. Moreover a breakdown of one unit does not impair the global working of the whole, which makes the system robust" (1991, p.755).

While the authors thus describe a property of distributed artificial intelligence systems, the Similarity with complex social functions in human groups and societies is striking.

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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