NON -- PRINCIPLES
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2302 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics, Methodology or model |
The French biologist H. PRAT made a census of a number of negative principles which contributed or could contribute to open new horizons to 2Oth (and 21st) Century sciences:
- “1. Principle of non-identity: In experimental sciences, identity does not exist (two objects or elements can never be identical). … A mitosis, for example, is never strictly equational. Ignoring this fact led to many persistent errors in the interpretation of animal and vegetal organogenesis”.
- “2. Principle of non-repetition: As the set of causes corresponding to an experience A can never be identically reproduced in an experience B, only a more or less great probability can exist for confirmation in B of the results obtained in A; but never an absolute certainty. The probability increases with the number of concording experiences, but never becomes infinite”.
- “3. Principle of non-extrapolation: All laws and concepts that we formulate are only valid within given limits: those accessible to our observations on space, time energy, information scales. Beyond these limits we should not extrapolate”.
- “4. Principle of non-independence: All elements and parameters in the universe are interdependent. Any modification of one, modifies in some measure (big or small) all the others”.
- “5. Principle of non-constancy: In the universe, nothing is absolute: there are no universal constants; nothing is totally invariant”.
(This revolutionary statement leads its author to emphasize a totally abstracted formulation of E = mc2 , that should make it practically disembodied… and useless).
- “6. Principle of non-limitation: No limit may be imposed to any magnitude in the universe, which is limitless in all the hyper-space scales: space, time, matter, energy and information” (1968, p.3-4).
While these ideas should be taken “cum grano salis”, as “food for thought”, it should be noted that other non-principles were formulated by HEISENBERG and EINSTEIN, as well as by the non-aristotelician Polish-American logician A. KORZYBSKI, the Austrian mathematician K. GÖDEL and the French philosopher G. BACHELARD… not forgetting PRIGOGINE's non-equilibrium thermodynamics. They are undoubtedly present in systemics, where “the whole is not merely the sum of the parts” and in cybernetics, where causality is not anymore lineal.
Somehow, non-principles are related to complexity, as we finally met it in our minds.
See also
NO-, \entity{NON}