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

TIME BINDING 1)3)4)

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Ability of a system, to maintain the memory of past situations, to connect it for use in present action and use it to imagine future possible situations, and make plans to try to control these when arising.

The concept was introduced around 1920 by the Polish – American semanticist A. KORZYBSKI (1950a, b).

The time binding capacity grew continuously during the global evolution, as the brain became more differentiated. With man, endowed with a very complex encephalon this mechanism of preservation of cognitive maps acquired an absolutely crucial importance:

- psychologically, because it introduces a permanent coherence in behavior sequences, possible only within the time dimension;

- socially, because it introduces the possibility of institutionalization and prediction

Moreover, through technical means (language, writing, printing and nowadays all the new media for transmission and storage of information) time binding is transforming the human species into a global entity, endowed as a whole with memory and forecasting capacity.

More generally, time binding is obviously related to the self -replicative capacity of complex systems, Replication implies the existence of somehow stored information, needed to reproduce components and their correct interrelations (organizational closure).

Biological time, as well as psychological and cultural time seems to depend on the speed of the the replication process.

Time binding capacity also seems to increase with the degree of complexity of systems. As shown by V. CSANYI, once the replicative and organizational process is launched in human groups, the trend to increasing complexity seems an inevitable result (1993, p.268).

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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