Second Generation General System Theory: Perspectives in Philosophy and Approaches in Complex Systems

Dear Colleagues,

After the classical work of Norbert Wiener, Ross Ashby, Ludwig von Bertalanffy and many others, the concept of System has been elaborated in different disciplinary fields, allowing interdisciplinary approaches like in Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Cognitive Science, Economics, Education, Engineering, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, and Simulation Science.

The new challenge of Complexity and Emergence has made it even more relevant to the study of systemic aspects with high contextuality.

This conceptual shift on System concepts runs through the entire area of natural philosophy and epistemology, and requests the questioning of old and new science words in a new conceptual archipelago.

In his essay "American Lessons" (1985) the Italian writer Italo Calvino proposed six key words for the new millennium:

• Lightness
• Quickness
• Exactitude
• Visibility
• Multiplicity
• Consistency/ coherence

We think that these words, with other that the contributors will suggest, can be the basis of a possible dictionary of complexity sciences.

This Special Issue will focus on the nature of new problems, their eventually common aspects, properties and approaches partially already considered by different disciplines, and on new possibly unitary theoretical frameworks. In particular, this issue is devoted also to the philosophical and structural aspects of the complexity and emergence theories.

Examples of topics are: Artificial Intelligence and Simulation; Catastrophe theory; Causality and Chance in Modern Science; Chaos Theory; Cognitive Sciences; Control theory; Cybernetics; Decision theories; Dissipative Structures; Games Theory; Laws and Boundary Conditions in Complex Systems; Network Science; Probability Theories; Quantum-Like Systems; Sub- and Hyper-Computation Theories; Systems Biology.

Contributors are invited to present cases, proposals, approaches, models and theoretical frameworks to deal with such topics, for academic and disciplinary applications.

Prof. Gianfranco Minati
Prof. Eliano Pessa
Prof. Dr. Ignazio Licata
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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