International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

"Some state of the world at a given instant, focused from the viewpoint of some definition of a system" (M. LIU.1990, p. 40).

According to LIU we look for "… a representation of the world from a selected viewpoint and in relation to a predefined study objective. We prefer the term "situation" to the one of "state", in view that this latter one tends to be restricted to the description of the inside of the system, while a "situation" describes the system, its boundaries and its environment" (Ibid).

Of course, neither the "state", nor the "situation" can ever completely be described.

What we call a situation is merely the imperfect result of a set of simultaneous or nearly simultaneous perceptions, associated in a manner as coherent as possible, and to which an observer is able to give a global meaning.

A situation relates generally to the instantaneous state of a complex entity. R. ESPEJO stresses that: "… the complexity of the situation is defined by the number of non-equivalent outcomes recognized by the viewpoint in the situation" (1988, p.140). The viewpoint may be individual or shared through constructed consensus among various observers. In any case: "Individuals only see 'sides of a situation', never the whole of it; indeed there is no viewpoint that can capture in full the variety of a situation… not least because human activities are constantly being created and recreated by the people participating in it" (Ibid, p.139).

Moreover, a situation is only a fleeting event in a chain of events.

The observation of succesive situations allows to perceive a system or a process in course of transformation.

However, the coherence that may be perceived in the situation also depends on the previous knowledge by the observer of the constraints prevailing in the observed universe. This knowledge may be insufficient, for example because of the lack of historical data, or the inexistence of some means of observation, or due to some prejudices.

In these (very general) cases, the situation is partly "invisible" in G.de ZEEUW's sense (1992), and the observer may be led to a false evaluation and thus induced to commit mistakes. In St. BEER words: "He is playing a game of incomplete information" (1968, p.279).

According to R. ESPEJO: "… The complexity of the situation is defined by the number of non-equivalent outcomes recognized in the situation by the viewpoint" (1988, p.140)…. or by the different viewpoints of the participating observers during a period of time.

J. WARFIELD, inspired by G. VICKERS, recommends the use of the term "situation" in "replacement for the more commonly-used "problem", because: "It has been frequently observed that a problem is, invariably, a human construct not subject to observation. A situation, on the other hand, is at least partly observable, if not fully so. Inherently, it is dynamic, changing with time, and its observation is not limited to anyone individual. On the contrary, because it is often distributed in space and time, observation by various observers is often essential to its understanding. Moreover this term keeps the door open to exploration, while problems often harden into too-narrowly-defined frames of reference" (1990, p.9).