PARTITION
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2481 ▶ |
| Object type | Methodology or model |
The division in subsets of the model of a system.
St. BEER writes: “Obviously sets can have subsets. The commonest form of partition in ordinary life, and particularly in the company organization, is to define a set of subsets which exhaust the set and do not overlap” (1968, p.106).
This may be needed in order to construct a manageable model of the system. We should however remember that no-overlapping is fictional: without overlaps, the system would not be connected, and so, would not be a system at all. An unconfortable result of this is pointed out by M.C. LE DUC: “To date, nobody has conceived a general, teachable and explicit method for partitioning problems. Most scientific papers do not articulate how and why a particular partition, and not another, has been chosen. Analysis is an intuitive process that a competent scientist has learnt by experience. The worst result of this precept is that many take the part for the whole… Just walk into an hospital or a university” (1992, p.919).
A. EDWARDS fractalization of VENN diagrams seems to open a way to partition without loss of connections (1989).