SYSTEM (Concrete)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 3344 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Epistemology, ontology or semantics, Methodology or model |
1a) “An aggregate of items that happen to be things (concrete items) and furthermore interrelated in such a way that the relations make some difference to the components” (M. BUNGE.1974, p.235).
1b) A set of things, together with the set of connections among them“ (p.229).
2) A system whose “at least two elements are objects” (R.L. ACKOFF, 1972).
BUNGE equates “concrete” with “material” (1993, p.212). He also writes: “… some of the relations among the components of a concrete system are connections or links, i.e. every component of the system acts on or is acted upon by some other components of the same system” (BUNGE, 1974, p.235).
He also states: “On the other hand, a set of states of a thing and a collection of events, even if ordered, are not concrete systems” (1979, p.7).
And an “… equally pervasive feature of concrete systems is that they react on their environment, i.e. that their output is never nil (The so-called machines without output, studied in automata theory, are of course fictions)” (1979, p.25).
Correspondingly: “All concrete systems are physical entities, in that they possess energy — a measure of changeability… However, some concrete systems are more than just physical entities, in the sense that the categories of physics are insufficient to account for them. For example, some are social systems” (p.45).
R.L. ACKOFF observes: “In concrete systems establishment of the existence and properties of elements and the nature of the relationships between them requires research with an empirical component in it. Such systems, therefore, are the subject of study of the so-called non-formal sciences” (Ibid).