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.

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BREMERMANN's LIMIT 3)5)

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"No data processing system, whether artificial or living can compute more that 2 x 10 bits per second and per gram of its mass" (as stated by K. KRIPPENDORFF, 1986, p.8).

G. KLIR writes: "Using the limit of information processing obtained for one gram of mass and one second of processing time, BREMERMANN then calculates the total number of bits processed by an hypothetical computer the size of the Earth within a time period equal to the estimated age of the Earth… This imaginary computer would not be able to process more than 2.56 x 10 bits, or when rounding up 10 bits. This last number 10 is usually referred to as BREMERMANN's limit and problems that require processing more than 10bits of information are called transcomputational problems" (1993, p.44-5)

KLIR adds: "The problem of transcomputationality arises in various contexts. One of them is pattern recognition… Another context… is the area of testing large-scale integrated digital circuits ". As a result, we need a "science of simplification" to reduce the problems of complex systems to a manageable size. This is one of the basic aims of systemics."

K. KRIPPENDORFF writes that the limit "refers to a self-contained system where the power supply is included in the total mass and where computation is defined as the transmission of information over one or more channels within the system. Recognizing that computation requires energy for changing physical markers and for recognizing such changes in subsequent steps, the limit is obtained from EINSTEIN's relation between energy and matter, E=mc, and HEISENBERG's uncertainty principle, which specifies the inaccuracy or noise in the measurement of energy" (1986, p.8).

For a suggestive development about "Everything material stops at 10" see W. ROSS ASHBY (1974, 166-9).

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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