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 (Purposeful) 1)4)

"(A system) which can produce the same outcome in different ways in the same – internal or external – state and can produce different outcomes in the same and different states" (R.L. ACKOFF, 1972).

Such systems may be equifinal.

R.L. ACKOFF explains: "Thus a purposefuful system is one which can change its goals under constant conditions; it selects ends as well as means and thus displays will. Human beings are the most familiar examples of such systems".

He adds: "A system which can choose between different outcomes can place different values on different outcomes" (1972, p.87).

This leads ACKOFF to the concept of ideal seeking system.

Pursuing this line of thought, W. ULRICH advocates for a "purposeful systems paradigm". This idea is synthetized by R.L. FLOOD and M.C. JACKSON: "… in a purposeful system, the ability to determine the purpose must be spread throughout the system; the system should produce knowledge relevant to purposes and encourage debate about purposes; and all plans or proposals for design should be critically assessed in terms of their normative content. Critical systems heuristics is about the design and assessment of purposeful systems" (1991, p.203).

This trend is now visible in S. BEER's Viable System Model; in J. WARFIELD's Generic Design; in the FUSCHL type Conversations; in J.A. JOHANNESSEN's Holographic model; in I.I MITROFF and H.A. LINSTONE's Unbounded System Thinking and in R.L. FLOOD and M.C. JACKSONS's Total Systems Intervention.

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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