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

SYSTEM (Anticipatory) 1)4)

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A "system that possesses on-going capabilities of building relevant systems models of its environment and is able to use these models for making decisions and actions that optimize specific goals" (Adapted from G. KLIR, 1991, p.190).

Thus: "This means that an on-going systems modeling of relevant aspects of the environment will be an essential feature of the decision-making infrastructure of organizations. This implies that expertise in systems science will be in increasing demand by organizations in the information society" (Ibid).

R. ROSEN observes that "the essence of anticipatory behavior… involves the concept of feedforward, rather than feedback". Indeed: "the essence of feedback control is that it is error-actuated; in other words the stimulus to corrective action is the discrepancy between the system's actual present state and the state the system should be in. Stated otherwise, a feedback control system must already be departing from its nominal behavior before control begins to be exercised".

As to the feedforward system, its basic condition is: "that present change of state is determined by an anticipated future state, computed in accordance with some internal model of the world" (1979, p.183).

This is different of, but consonant with the CONANT-ASHBY idea that "Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system": Such a model is needed for the system to be able to make more or less reliable predictions about its own future when confronted with external (or internal) disturbances. It is of course necessarily based on registered past experiences and their outcomes. There is thus no time paradox in the concept of anticipatory behavior.

SYSTEM (Anticipatory)

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→ Anticipatory system

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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