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

PARSIMONY (Requisite) 2)3)

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The necessity to avoid that "the rate of flow of information to the designer… exceed processing capacity" (J. WARFIELD, 1995, p.126)

WARFIELD even enounces a "Law of requisite parsimony", related to the fact that "Every individual's short term brain activity lends itself to dealing simultaneously with approximately seven items (a number that is reached with three basic items and four of their joint interactions)" (p.125).

If the law is not respected, overload sets in, and some data are not registered or interactions not perceived.

WARFIELD comments: "If the law of requisite parsimony is being unknowingly violated, one would expect that the impact would be revealed in the failure of large systems design. This is precisely what is being observed all around the world" (p.126).

The subject is related to the problems posed by aggregation and underconceptualization. Satisfying simplification through aggregation is more easily obtained through systemic models, out of which good criteria about levels of interactions can be obtained.

→ "Algorithmic compression" (as a possible tool for parsimony)

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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