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

ORGANISM 2)5)

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A coherent set of structured biological elements able to fulfill processes and functions.

This is the third level of complexity in J.G. MILLER's taxonomy of living systems. Organisms are made of interconnected elements ordered in structures (like organs) and able to carry out interdependent processes, producing a global behavior. MILLER also classifies as organisms colonial living forms and multicellular structures, as for example slime molds, when in their aggregated state. (See "dictyostelium discoideum").

N. RASHEVSKY gives a more formal definition: "… a system which satisfies a prescribed set of n-ary relations or, in other words, which is described by a set of n-placed predicates that are characterized by specified properties".

This author adds a caveat: "The choice of the system of such predicates still remains, however, to a large extent, arbitrary" (1967, p.21).

RASHEVSKY states: "A social organism is a set of individuals… A multicellular biological organism is a set of cells and… a unicellular organism may be considered as a set of genes" (Ibid).

An organism may thus be a living system, or a system of living systems.

G. PASK states: "… when we speak of an organism, rather than the chemicals it is made from, we do not mean something described by a control system. An organism is a control system with its own survival as its objective. The basic homeostasis is to preserve itself as an individual… To survive in changeful surroundings an organism must be an adaptive control system" (1961a, p.72).

This concept, first proposed in 1961, is closely related to autopoiesis and autonomy, as can be seen in the following quotation from PASK: "The overall homeostasis, preserving the organism, can be expressed as the conjoint action of many homeostatic systems, each preserving a structure or condition needed for the functioning of the others" (p.73).

It is now commonly admitted, as stated by V. CSANYI, that an organism "… is a more or less autonomous network of components and component producing processes which is replicating in time… As a unity it is also a component of higher organizational levels, like ecosystems or the whole biosphere" (1993, p.264).

This view is close to the organizational closure concept as well as to connectionism.

→ Auto-genetic system precursor

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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