System Ontology and Descriptionism - Bertalanffy's View and New Developments

Abstract

After a first historical sketch about the rise of system ontology, some problems with naturalizing the system concept are worked out: –In different ontological positions the danger of essentialism is actual. This holds also for a certain interpretation of evolution that is suspected to be an essentialism? Bertalanffy´s view is set into contrast to this positions –the constructivist approach. This gives rise to introduce the authors notion of descriptionisms as it is proposed and revisited here. The notions of system surface, of the processes of system modeling and system control serve to contrast the reality of descriptions with unnecessary ontological commitments.