IFSR Newsletter 1997 Vol. 16 No. 1 April
Argentine Society for Systems and Cybernetics
Charles Francois (editor)
This work offers a practically complete and up-to-date overview of the field of Systems and Cybernetics, as it developed from its beginnings.
Its scope is simultaneously informative, comparative and evaluative. It is internally interconnected in such a way as to offer the possibility to use it either as a dictionary, or a kind of general textbook.
The work includes very general and well known basic concepts as well as considerable supplementary information on the subject, until now scattered among hundreds of papers presented in international or national meetings, most of them completely out of reach of the great majority of scholars.
While written in English, it contains also a considerable store of valuable information gathered from sources in various other languages (Dutch, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish).
It is not highly technical and should be easily understood by anybody interested in global comprehension of complex situations and organizations of any kind from ecology and psychology to business administration.
It provides the tool for a general worldview, useful for any specialist in any trade who would like to establish, through a common language, a better transdisciplinarian communication with specialists in any other disciplines; for leaders endowed with economic, political or social responsabilities, or for the public in general. It aims at establishing a sound epistemological basis for systemics and cybernetics, by comparative critique of concepts and models.
It contains nearly 3000 entries with numerous verbatim quotes from authors, and a bibliography of more than 1200 entries.
It is printed by K.G. SAUR’s Verlag, München, Germany and will appear soon.