CORRELATION (Spurious)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 732 ▶ |
| Object type | General information |
According to some early critics of G.S.T., most analogies lead only to senseless comparisons between widely different entities (R.C. BUCK, 1956).
Of course, analogy is merely a weak heuristic tool… but is it better than none. Moreover, an analogy may lead to an homology or isomorphy, i.e. a more formalized model that can be applied to different objects of study.
BERTALANFFY writes: “Buck's criticism is, in principle, the same as if one would criticize NEWTON's law because it draws a loose ”analogy“ between apples, planets, ebb and tide and many other entities; or if one would declare the theory of probability meaningless because it is concerned with the ”analogy“ of games of dice, mortality statistics, molecules in a gas, the distribution of hereditary characteristics, and a host of other phenomena” (1962, p.9).