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

OBSERVATIONAL LANGUAGE 3)4)

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The descriptive and interpretive language a culture uses during some period of its evolution to connect itself with reality.

This concept has been established and discussed by G.de ZEEUW, who describes it as a set of rules which state constraints in the way the observations are done, registered, ordered in some coherent mental frame of reference and communicated among members of the culture (1992).

Of course "… the observational language limits itself… by imposing models on the actors in an interaction, that is, imposing criteria for interaction" (Ibid.,p.1077).

As a result, no observational language gives an unrestricted access to reality and always leads to the impossibility to observe certain situations. As no language is perfectly transparent, there always some measure of "invisibility" (de ZEEUW's terminology).

de ZEEUW states that the observational language evolves through time, generally under the pressure of new necessities. He argues that we find ourselves in such a period of transformation of the observational language, in relation to the emergence of numerous new features in science and cultures.

The same point what made in a quite different way by the French philosopher M. FOUCAULT (1966).

The slow shift of observational languages, of which we are generally unaware, is probably universal and permanent.

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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