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

PROBLEM SOLVER 1)

← Back

Someone who is supposedly able to offer a solution to a problem.

von FOERSTER writes:"… there are no problem solvers, because they do not have any problem in the first place. It is our problem they help us to solve, like any other useful tool, say, a hammer which may be dubbed a problem solver for driving nails into a board. The danger in this subtle semantic twist by which the responsibility for action is shifted from man to a machine lies in making us lose sight of the problem of cognition" (1981, p.237).

Such a caveat is surely justified: as we all know, when some mistake had taken place, the (ir)responsible factotum was always inclined to tell us: "The computer made a mistake". Of course, nobody believes that anymore nowadays.

Farther afield, no machine can give a correct answer if fed with an incorrect model of the question or situation. ("Garbage in, garbage out").

As to her/his practical efficiency, the problem solver depends on the tools mastered: "… the challenge is to find algorithms that give reasonably good solutions reasonably quickly" (R. MATTHEWS, 1995, p.42). Recently, the arsenal of the problem solver has become enriched with new tools, as for example genetic algorithms and connectionist models.

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]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint