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

MECHANICISM in CYBERNETICS 1)3)

According to J.L.LE MOIGNE, the cybernetic paradigm may be considered "as an extreme form of the mecanicist paradigm" (1990, p.33).

This is in fact mainly the case of the first cybernetics as it was proposed and explained by N. WIENER who, as a practically oriented mathematician, insisted on the "control and communication in the animal and the machine".

It is indeed obvious that these first cybernetic models maintained a quite reductionist bias and were mainly applied to stabilization problems by introduction of strictly limitative constraints. It was mainly by the use of negative feedback that these were introduced, even if only a convenient sequence of negative and positive feedbacks is apt to produce a permanent regulation.

This initial cybernetic mechanicism made cybernetics quite suspect to psychologists and sociologists, who feared its possible use to justify or even organize some "Big Brother" type of social and individual control.

These qualms unfortunately closed their minds to M. MARUYAMA's 2nd Cybernetics (processes of deviation and amplification by mutual causality) and still more so to the cybernetics of 2nd order of H von FOERSTER, related to self-organizing systems, and to the conversation concepts of G. PASK.

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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