EMPIRICAL VIEW in systemics

Charles François (2004). EMPIRICAL VIEW in systemics, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(1): 1067.

Collection	International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics
Year	2004
Vol. (num.)	2(1)
ID	◀ 1067 ▶
Object type	Epistemology, ontology or semantics

E. LASZLO developed a systemic view of empiricism, quite close to SINGER's, CHURCHMAN's and ACKOFF's “experimentalism”: “Empirical facts lie where theory meets nature: there is no fact without theoretical conceptions, just as there is none without an observational content. The meeting of theory and nature defines the plane of observation and experiment: that is the realm of fact” (1987, p.178).

What LASZLO calls “empirical adequacy” is thus strongly influenced by various systemic viewpoints:

- facts should not be isolated from context

- facts may respond to different levels of abstraction

- facts are not independent from the observer's perceptive frames of reference.