IRREDUCIBILITY
Charles François (2004). IRREDUCIBILITY, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(1): 1781.
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 1781 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
The impossibility to understand the global character of a system by merely studying its parts.
This is E. LASZLO's formulation of the non-reductionist stand of systemics (1974, p.212).
Systems are not merely summative, they are integrative, implying thus the existence of communication networks, interactions through many different feedbacks, selective constraints, and the consequent impossibility to understand fully the parts as working elements in the system, when their reciprocal horizontal and vertical links are severed, or simply not taken in account.