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.

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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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REALISM (Hypothetical) 3)

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D.T. CAMPBELL stated in 1961: "My general orientation I shall call a hypothetical realism. An 'external' world is hypothesized in general, and specific entities and processes are hypothesized in particular, and the observable implications of these hypotheses (or hypostatizations or reifications) are sought out for verification. No part of the hypotheses has any 'justification' or validity prior to, or other than through, the testing of these implications" (1961, p.17).

However, CAMPBELL did not yet consider the deeper nature of 'verification' or 'justification' or 'validity'.

It was more or less at the same time that G. PASK, H.von FOERSTER and others started to scrutinize the role of observers and of their acquired and constantly renovated consensus in the knowledge of reality.

G. VOLLMER, quoted by H. TOTH thus explains the main tenets of hypothetical realism (1992):

"All knowledge is hypothetical, i.e. conjectural, fallible, preliminary. There exists a real world, independent of our consciousness; it is structured, coherent and quasi-continuous: it is at least partially knowable and explainable by perception, experience and intersubjective science…" (p.28 – in TOTH, 1983, p.307).

Knowledge is thus based on consensus, but is somehow anchored in reality and verified or falsified by experience. However no result is ever absolute, as already explained by POPPER.

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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