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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MEMORY (Associative) 2)

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The capacity of various elements or subnets in a network to collectively retrieve and share data existing in the network.

In a quite close sense, M. BODEN speaks of "contextual memory", through which: "an input pattern can activate not only a similar pattern, but also some aspects of its previous context… An apple in a religious painting may remind you of Eve, whereas an apple in a still life does not)" (1990, p.119).

It becomes evermore obvious that associative memory is the potential ability which enables the living brain to easily assemble existing data into very complex representations and perform quite difficult chores in very short spans of time. Associative memory seems to be preexistent to its uses, in the form of frames of reference, which express specific aspects of organizational closure.

Parallel distributed processing in connection machines (connectionist architectures) is now trying to emulate this ability.

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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