PHENOMENA
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2549 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
The perceptions we obtain from reality in itself.
The Kantian Ding an sich is never directly accesible to us. It corresponds to KORZYBSKI's “territory”.
In BATESON's words: “The territory never gets in at all… Always the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps of maps, ad infinitum. All 'phenomena' are literally 'appearences'” (1973, p.429).
In this sense, what General Systems Research is trying to do is merely to find out very general and coherent patterns for isomorphic representation between the complex phenomena that we call systems at different levels of complexity (see for example A. KORZYBSKI's “structural differential” and J. MILLER's taxonomy of living systems).
R. FUENMAYOR interestingly describes phenomena as “distinctions made on a background ”
The crux of the matter is of course, who makes the distinctions and on the base of which frame of reference or theory