REIFICATION
Charles François (2004). REIFICATION, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(2): 2812.
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2812 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
The fallacy to treat or regard an abstraction or a model as a concrete system.
This “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”, in WHITEHEAD'S words is one of the most serious risks that a systemist can incur in. It has two different aspects:
1) The danger to construct a pure and unqualified abstraction and to use it or work on it as if it were part of the real world. Examples could be: “Homo economicus”; “the State”, “Development”, etc., and even possibly “Intelligence quotient”.
2) The danger to use a constructed model of some concrete system as if the system were a faithful (i.e. isomorphic) copy of the model.
Such attitudes are ruinous for the credibility of systemics.