Early attempts at systems theory focused on interdisciplinary studies, or
the search for general concepts that were used in similar ways in many
disciplines. Such concepts as "stability", "feedback" and
"information" appear in many specific theories, but usually according
to different fundamental ideas and with specific emphases. In the spirit of
the original positivists \cite{NEOCAR38}, it was hoped that by placing
emphasis on developing a common terminology for the special scientists,
that theoretical unification would follow.
Such a goal has, however, proved elusive at best. Only a very few
researchers have explicitly pursued cross-disciplinary theories
\cite{OLR82,TRL88}. Rather than unification, recent systems theory has seen
a proliferation of new language and terminology. For example, the
Proceedings of the 1991 Conference of the 
International Society for
the Systems Sciences includes an excellent index \cite{ISSS91} of keywords
used in proceedings papers, listing keywords and the papers they were used
in. Table 1 shows a summary of the number of papers that
shared a certain number of keywords, and the keywords that were shared the
most.
| # Cross-References | # Papers | Keywords |
|---|
| 1 | 394 | |
| 2 | 48 | |
| 3 | 7 | |
| 4 | 3 | |
| 5 | 2 | Process Theory, Toroid |
| 6 | 1 | Living Systems Theory |
| 7 | 2 | System, Integration |
| 8 | 1 | Living Systems |
Table 1: Summation of keywords shared amongst papers
For example, the keyword "living systems" appeared in eight
papers, and was the only keyword to do so, while both "system" and
"integration" appeared in seven papers each. It should be noted that
"Process Theory" and "Toroid" were each used by single author groups in
multiple similar papers; that JG and JL Miller's "Living Systems Theory"
\cite{MIJ78,MIJMIJ90} was a focus of a number of special sessions at the
conference, which Profs. Miller and Miller attended; and that "System"
is the single unifying concept of the entire society. The inclusion of the
term "Integration" only reveals the irony of the absence of integration
in the terminology used by members of the ISSS. This is demonstrated by the
exponential distribution of keyword sharing.
We can conclude that there is virtually to terminological cohesion in
the systems field.
Principia Cybernetica proceeds from the assumption of the early systemists, that a primary
purpose of Cybernetics and Systems Science is to move towards the unification of science, in part
(but only in part) through terminological unification and reduction. To
that end, a primary purpose of Principia Cybernetica will be to perform semantic
analysis on terms and concepts through the explication of their various
senses in the context of their historical development. It is intended to
identify synonyms, perhaps adopting a single term to replace
anachronistic, specialized, or otherwise obsolete usages from the family of
terms. Sometimes there will be good criteria to select the term, other
times the term can be chosen arbitrarily without loss of generality.
Otherwise, a variety of semantic relations can be identified, for example
antonym, generalization or instance. New terminology
will only be introduced as a last resort. In this way, we intend to be able
to adopt a single coherent set of terminology to be used to develop Metasystem Transition Theory.
