Editorial

Citation

Rudall, B.H. (1999), "Editorial", Kybernetes, Vol. 28 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1999.06728daa.001

Editorial

This special issue is concerned with highlighting some of the many initiatives that have been taken in research and development using cybernetic and systemic approaches.

It illustrates, once again, that a multi- and trans-disciplinary strategy for tackling both research projects and development programmes is a remarkably successful one.

The papers that have been selected illustrate the many different applicative studies that lend themselves to these approaches. Each one is but a representative example of a whole range of research and development endeavours that are being carried out worldwide by the contributors and supporters of this journal. We trust that by publishing their work we will encourage them to even greater achievements.

Some of the contributions are "invited papers", commissioned because not only are the authors distinguished in their own field but they are able to present their work in such a way that an essentially balanced view is given.

The first of these papers is contributed by Charles Musès who provides an essential introduction to these approaches. He writes about cybernetics as the conscience of science and discusses the studies of interactions between both physical and sociopolitical feedbacks and the theory that lies behind them. The "cybernetic idea" that he describes appears in its different forms in the papers that follow. His references to the work of Wiener are not only apt but often unique because many have not been properly understood or indeed presented to the wider research community.

When Amitava Ghosal was invited to contribute he was preparing to address the Silver Jubilee Conference of the Society of Management Science and Applied Cybernetics held in Delhi, India in 1998. We are grateful that his address has become an "invited paper" in this special issue. He is a pioneer of management cybernetics and a valued member of our Editorial Advisory Board. His contribution is concerned with "Second order cybernetics ­ implications in real life".

With Brian Garner and Swamy Kutti, Professor Ghosal also describes "Modelling expert resource management systems", which explains the concept of developing a new data structure based on semantic network called SYSTEM MAP. This in itself is an illustration of a systemic approach to management at a time when one major problem identified has been that of designing fully computer-controlled managements about a suitable dynamic data structure.

Guy Jumarie of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada, believes that we should not be surprised to come across fractals in the analysis of some dynamic systems involving human factors. This is a subject that has attracted a great deal of interest amongst scientists since Mandelbrot first used the term. Dr Jumarie's paper is an important contribution to this ensuing discussion.

The work of Professor Yves Cherruault and his colleagues is well known and their contributions are particularly esteemed worldwide. Their development of such important methods as those initiated by the late George Adomian provides new and powerful methods for the solution of large classes of non-linear equations that appear in our studies of systems and cybernetics. This is illustrated in this special issue by the publication of new results about the convergence of the Adomian method.

The control of the human immune system is considered by Bonawentura Kochel of Wroclaw University of Medicine's Department of Toxicology in Poland. He has demonstrated that by means of cybernetics and catastrophe theory a control of the first-line human defence can be mounted with promising results. Using an autocatalytic mode he shows how a biocybernetic approach aids the understanding of the process and its analysis.

Professor Ralf Östermark and his colleague Jaana Aaltonen have already published papers in this journal that have illustrated the importance of the systemic approach to the modelling of financial systems. Their contribution is presented in two parts. The first describes the methodology of the competing transformation models, and the second part presents the results of the empirical tests. Their comparisons provide useful data and suggest other interesting avenues for research.

Uri Fidelman of the Department of General Studies at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, has contributed to our understanding of the human brain in the many papers he has published in this journal. It is appropriate, therefore, that the last contribution in this special issue should be devoted to his current research. The recent project to unify the researches that have been carried out in this field was aptly named "The decade of the brain" and Dr Fidelman in this publication and earlier papers has made a positive contribution to this ongoing work. Titled "A suggested hemispheric basis for the guided search model", his review looks at experimental findings that are not suited to either a guided search model proposed by Cave and Wolfe in 1990 and by Cave in 1994, or also the modified guided search model of Efon and Yund in 1996. He discusses them, outlining the assumptions which he believes explains these discrepancies, and then introduces possible alternative models.

All of these contributions illustrate the growing importance of using cybernetic and systemic approaches to the ever increasing range of topics we seek to develop and to research. By dedicating this issue to this theme we show not only the diversity of the approaches chosen but also some of the current trends in cybernetics and systems research and development. Whilst we all may accept that our fields of interest are indeed multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary and the topics studied under the aegis of cybernetics and systems wide ranging, the variety and the extent of the strategies developed are truly astonishing. We are still, however, at liberty to question them and to discuss their choice by our contributors. Such interactions are to be encouraged whether through these pages or by direct contact with the authors.

Brian H. RudallEditor-in-Chief