SIG:General Systems Mathematics and Languaging

News from SGSR SIG Chair Jamie Rose in advance of the 68th Conference

 

ISSS Colleagues and friends,

 

In advance of the coming June 2024 ISSS conference  ...   and related IFSR and ASC conferences. 
the Chair of the ISSS General Systems Mathematics and Languaging SIG ask that you find time to 
read the General Theory of Systems "framing paper" {link here provided} which discusses the contexts 
and considerations which are required of any investigator~analyst delving into "systems modeling" on 
the grandest scale imagined by Bertalanffy & peers in the 1950's.

 

Special applications ... specific to your own field(s) of expertise are important.  Every one  comes to the 
at-large mission with important knowledge and verbiage from those fields ... definite well established 
perspectives .. frames of reference.  That is excellent.

 

All this paper asks, is that you recognize the value and relevance of other frames of reference ... and 
consider what added skills you have for recognizing and translating shared properties.  And ... consider 
factors of search~review~evaluation criteria useful to your own established mindsets and understandings, 
which might help you appreciate the commonality .. despite differences of labels and relationships between 
what you know and what colleagues know using other labels and identified relations.

ACADEMIA.EDU paper:  "Nested Levels of Organized Systems .."

 

 

James N [Jamie] Rose
Chair "ISSS General Systems Mathematics and Languaging SIG" [Special Integration~Investigations Group]

June 6, 2024
integrity@prodigy.net
Minden,  NV   USA

SGSR (now ISSS) was established in 1956 in legal By-Laws which specifically included these stated Objectives:

 

·      To promote the unity of science through improving communications among the specialists in various scientific fields.

·      To facilitate transfer of concepts, laws, and models across disciplines and professions.

·      To encourage development of theoretical models where they are lacking.

 

This high endeavor was and remains “science” based … where “science” means careful human analysis using vernacular languages of descriptions and identifications, and also employing its best symbolic language form … Mathematics.

 

By development and practice, Mathematics is recognized as a universal representative set of depictions and assignments accessible to all cultures and vernacular social languages.  It includes computation, geometry, relations, modeling, logic --- temporal and spatial, theoretical and practical, potential and enacted, intangible and formative, intentional and unconditional, causal and acausal, the exact and the inexact, the effected, the possible, the improbable and even the impossible.  It was developed to help match our experiences and conceptual interpretations of states and dynamics of most all the phenomena of the world, the universe ... and our engagings with existence in all its myriad instantiations.

 

Essentially … the universe - all “systems” within it … are pervasive shared patterns of consistent integrated and inter-related processes and entities.

 

The founders of our General Theory of Systems organization were themselves scientists in different fields, and were familiar with and collegial with scientists and practitioners in all fields of science, the arts and humanities.  As high academics they typically used mathematical modelings and references in their papers, books and presentations.  It was part of established practices and so as Special Integration Groups (SIGs) - the keystone subjects groups of explorations and comparisons between annual conferences - were established at the outset and during the following years, no SIGs were ever formed or sustained to examine the Mathematics of systems theory/ies nor Languages, as separate topics of explicit focus.  Intellectual practices were ‘lived’, and did not intuitively require re-examination.    But to be true to the ideal of a General Theory of Systems, that is not acceptable.  Inquiry and analysis … full scientific dependable reliable value … rests in this most difficult but necessary examination of existence and being, of all the aspects and properties observed and even imagined as viable and valid. 

 

A linguistics SIG was briefly formed in the late 1990’s by the Chair of this December 2021 approved “General Systems Mathematics and Languaging SIG”, James [Jamie] Rose.  It was entitled “Persistence of Image SIG”  [based on writings by the systems linguist/chemist Benjamin Whorf, 1930’s; 1956 “Language, Thought  and Reality” ed. J Carroll ; see also: von Bertalanffy 1968].  Circumstances saw it survive for only 2 or 3 conferences cycles.

 

But also, in academic context in the decades since the 1980’s, fewer and fewer conference papers included mathematical references or modelings, while Chaos, Complexity, Cybernetics, Systems Engineering and Systems Management gained popularity external to ISSS conversations, in other “systems related” academic venues. 

 

Notably - ‘Science’ is not limited to mathematics. But whether expressed in equations, symbolic logic, topology~geometry, category theory, et al., Mathematics is recognized by almost all humanity as the keystone communication form of scientific ideas, concepts and relations.  And those other venues maintained strong mathematical modelings, as ISSS members and general systems practitioners drifted away from it.

 

Now however, General Theory of Systems will revive and reclaim the initiative of its scientist founders.  With the establishment of this “General Systems Mathematics and Languaging SIG”, the science of General Systems - based on exquisite analysis of mathematical properties and relations vis a vis natural vernacular language versions of the same events and phenomena - will become a permanent part of the analyses and discoveries made by current and future members … because that is what the world expects of a scientific organization and intellectual~practical concepts presenters ... leaders.  ISSS General Theory of Systems needs to be understood in natural conversant language and mathematics … together.   This is necessary in-house, and will be the necessary foundation for the world and scientific communities to rely on, trust, and find wisdom within.

 

If the Objectives of SGSR/ISSS in the By-Laws include:

 

·      To promote the unity of science through improving communications among the specialists in various scientific fields.

·      To facilitate transfer of concepts, laws, and models across disciplines and professions.

·      To encourage development of theoretical models where they are lacking.

 

then this SIG will be the core of what ISSS and its members accomplish in the future.

In that context, the “General Systems Mathematics and Languaging SIG” must be slightly different in structure, use and expectations than the other specialized topics SIGs.

 

Whereas other subject’s investigators and analysts will develop local mathematics equations to map and match specific local behaviors, general mathematics and languaging comparisons and unification of all possible systems needs an encyclopedic reference frame and scope.

 

While this SIG will entertain and process some conversations and papers applicable to narrow systems and phenomena, the majority of the work by its members will take on the GLOBAL THEORY of SYSTEMS … with the goal of using established mathematics and inventing new mathematics better capable of embracing phenomena and relations spanning from the Shinn-Yu Event (aka “Big Bang”) when dimensions, time, space, energies, mass came into existence - as primal system/systems themselves – on through all the imagined and observed and identified systems of extraordinary complexity discussed by Science and humanity.   We re-affirm the aspirations of SGSR/ISSS’s founders and original members … to discover the absolute shared qualia of a coherent, consistent, co-dependent, compatibly functioning Universe … (or universes, should that be the extended finding).

 

And Conversations ~Debates will be the norm; follow up investigations encouraged if not required.   Theory validated (or not) in regard to Practices. Practices illuminated by Theory.

 

Honest critical analysis will be the standard thinking encouraged in this SIG. With the hope that ISSS will make important discoveries and contributions to humanity and Life … on this home planet, and beyond, wherever evolution and knowledge and empathy provide open paths of possibilities.