PARSIMONY (Requisite)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2477 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics, Methodology or model |
The necessity to avoid that “the rate of flow of information to the designer… exceed processing capacity” (J. WARFIELD, 1995, p.126)
WARFIELD even enounces a “Law of requisite parsimony”, related to the fact that “Every individual's short term brain activity lends itself to dealing simultaneously with approximately seven items (a number that is reached with three basic items and four of their joint interactions)” (p.125).
If the law is not respected, overload sets in, and some data are not registered or interactions not perceived.
WARFIELD comments: “If the law of requisite parsimony is being unknowingly violated, one would expect that the impact would be revealed in the failure of large systems design. This is precisely what is being observed all around the world” (p.126).
The subject is related to the problems posed by aggregation and underconceptualization. Satisfying simplification through aggregation is more easily obtained through systemic models, out of which good criteria about levels of interactions can be obtained.
See also
Algorithmic compression (as a possible tool for parsimony)