Tectology

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

It`s a term coined by Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928), scientist, philosopher, economist, physician, novelist, poet, and Marxist revolutionary, unknown to almost everyone except for the experts in Russian science history.

His original proposition consisted of unifying all the human, biological and physic sciences, by considering them as systems of relationships, and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all kind of systems. His work "Tektology: Universal Organization Science", finished by the early 1920s, anticipated many of the ideas that were popularized later by Norbert Wiener in Cybernetics and Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the General Systems Theory.

There is a great reference covering Bogdanov's work, "Bogdanov and His Work: A Guide to the Published and Unpublished Works of Alexander A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky) 1873-1928".

The first English translation of Bogdanov Tektology is due to Peter Dudley and his work at the Centre for Systems Studies of University of Hull in U.K.

As an introduction to the posibilities that could offer the ideas from Bogdanov to the Complex Systems Science, it's worth a look this article from John Mikes prepaired for the first International Conference on Complex Systems in 1997, organized by the New England Complex Systems Institute.