DISTINCTION (Primary)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 958 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics, Methodology or model |
The most elemental distinction that can be made. D. HERBST writes: “When a distinction is made, a boundary comes into being together with the inside and the outside of a form . What is generated in this way is a triadeic co-genetic unit consisting of the inside, the outside and the distinction made, which is represented by the boundary. At this stage, we have nothing more than a form in an empty space ”(1993, p. 29)
Examples are a line (or a circle) in an empty two-dimensional surface, or plane.
Herbst adds: “In its most general form, what has become generated…is a unit consisting of not less than three elements ”(Ibid)
This is in fact the basic triadic unit, related in different ways to Ch.S. PEIRCE's “thirdness”and to SPENCER- BROWN's laws of form .
Any distinction is also an operator in the meaning developed by R. VALLÉE (1995)
See also
Dyad, Network, Topology, Triad, Triadic relation, Triadicity