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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RULES (Generative) 2)

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Interacting rules endowed with the potential to develop complex systems when applied to some initial group of elements.

Such rules, through a prescribed way to combine some type of elements, leads to the production of new elements and combinations of these elements. The MENDELEIEV periodic table of elements is based on a complex set of induced generative rules.

The problem of generating rules has been investigated by various authors, from von NEUMANN and TURING on. M. MARUYAMA studied it in a often quoted article (1963).

The following aspects seem important:

1. Construction rules are framing algorithms, whose potentialities are only partially revealed by environmental conditions: in another environment they could produce a different structure.

2. The original order of the elements exerts a determining influence on the way the rules will act. They have a positional value and, in real systems, specific characteristics, as for example in the case of genes.

3. In MARUYAMA's words: "When the rules are unknown, the amount of information needed to discover the rules is much greater than the amount of information needed to describe them" (p.168). This is another way to express that the set of rules constitutes an algorithm.

Generative rules, when complex and not over-constraining, can produce a practically infinite variety, as for example genetic codes, chess rules or, in music, classical harmony as well as dodecaphonic rules. (M. BODEN, 1990, p.38-40).

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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