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

PROPERTY and FUNCTION 1)

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F. BONSACK emphatizes the necessity to clearly distinguish "property" from "function". He writes on the topic:

"Some biochemist say: "To fix oxygen is a property of hemoglobin. To say that it is its function does not add anything, if not a finalist connotation, that should be eliminated from modern science…

"It is true that, when we isolate hemoglobin, it has only properties. A property characterizes an isolated substance, it is tied to this substance. To speak of "function" has no sense here. The function is no property of the chemical substance, it is a property of the functional organization of the whole. The property of hemoglobin to fix or to liberate oxygen is used by the function "transport of oxygen from the lungs to the tissues".

"The function is not tied to the chemical substance Oust as it is not tied to a person who occupies some post in an organization). The proof of this is that another substance (or another person) may act in the same function. Conversely, the same substance (or person) may perform different functions in the same organism (or organization) or in a different organism" (1989, p.23-4).

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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