Systems: Approaches, Theories, Applications

For many years I have believed in a particular style of education for myself. The idea is to focus on matters that you want to learn about, find a modest amount of money, and then organize a symposium of those matters, inviting knowledgeable individuals to participate - and, by extension - to come and help with my education. The Eighth George Hudson Symposium held at Plattsburgh, New York on April 11-12, 1975 was another attempt on my part to learn something. The ostensible reason for the Symposium was explained in the Announce­ ment of the Symposium as follows: Systems Theory is currently one of the exciting areas of intellectual activity, attracting persons from diverse disciplines. In fact, it has almost become the prototype of inter­ disciplinary effort. As such, it needs the interchange of ideas, viewpoints, and opinions as a necessary condition for growth. This Symposium was convened to bring together a number of persons- some of them experts and some beginners - for two days of con­ centrated interaction on Systems Theory. The breadth of the interests of the invited speakers can be noted from their "home" disciplines but space limitations forestall any attempt to document their actual current interests which range from brain function to political institutions to technoethics. The speakers were chosen for their expository and interactive ability as well as for their work in Systems Theory and ample time has been allowed for discussion with them.

Contenu

1. A Category-Theoretic Approach to Systems in a Fuzzy World.- 1. Machines in a Category.- 2. Fuzzy Machines.- 2. Parallelism, Slides, Schemas, and Frames.- 1. Parallelism.- 2. Slides and Schemas.- 3. Frames and Schemas.- 4. Development.- 5. More on Parallelism.- 3. The Fundamental Duality of System Theory.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Networks.- 3. Duality.- 4. Conclusion.- 4. Towards a Systems Methodology of Social Control Processes.- 5. States and Events.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Properties and Predicates.- 3. Definition of a State Function.- 4. Law Statements.- 5. Lagrangian Law Schemata.- 6. State Spaces.- 7. Law Statements and Transformation Formulas.- 8. Events and Processes.- 9. Event Space.- 10. The Category of Events.- 11. Concluding Remarks.- 6. Understanding Social and Economic Change in the United States.- 1. System Dynamics.- 2. Dynamics to Be Represented.- 3. Social and Economic Issues.- 4. Structure of the Model.- 5. Status, Schedule, Procedure.- 7. Pattern Discovery in Activity Arrays.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Sampling Procedure.- 3. Evaluation of Masks.- 4. Reduction of ST-Structures.- 5. Conclusions.- 8. A Purposive Behavior Model.- 9. Complexity and System Descriptions.- 10. Concerns, Comments, and Suggestions.- 1. Educational Concerns.- 2. Useful Mathematical Models.- 3. Problems of Applied Mathematics.- 4. Modeling.- 5. State Modeling of Objects.- 6. Questions.