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

HIERARCHIES (Properties of) 2)

According to B. WALLISER: "The properties of hierarchies may be studied from three viewpoints:

"- their organization is arborescent, the nodes being formed from homogeneous or heterogeneous objects and the characteristical relations connect every object, in principle in an exclusive way, to some immediately superior object. Moreover the tree is generally characterized by its depth (number of levels) and its extension (average number of descendants per object);

"- their workings result of the complementary or alternative behavior of the different entities, and of the concrete interactions between levels (interactions of various types and frequencies). The global structure is sometimes related to some environment, itself hierarchical, with communication at each level;

"- their evolution includes the initial upbuilding which quite naturally takes place by successive levels, but also includes either the ulterior rebuilding related to the modular modification or replacement of the elements, or a restructuration or reordering of the network of their relations" (1991,p.75).

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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