From ‘system approach’ to system ontology. An historical perspective

Abstract

The ‘system approach’ grew up of a holistic view and thus is not bound to a single discipline or a limited number of them. The systems notion to distinguish clearly between object-language and meta-language or Godel’s incompletability theorem lead to the notion of ‘systems hierarchy’ in which the value of some propositions can be determined only by looking at the pertinent meta-system. Wittgenstein’s emphasis that a language game ought to be seen in the context of social activity is evidence that a system should not be looked at in isolation but must be analysed in its environment. In Italian Economia Aziendale, ‘entity economics’, this approach has been applied since long time by the two giants of economic thinking, Fabio Besta and Gino Zappa, and more recently by the foundational works of many others Authors.

The hierarchies in terms of information needs are connected to decisions and decisions are related to objectives. In the ‘evolutionary hierarchy’ it is relevant to know where a system begins having built-in preferences, thus exercise value judgements and consequently dealing with an inner aspect, consciousness in the broader sense, taking into account that in any system the interaction between the individual components seems to be leaded by the information.

Beyond the mere ‘traditional’ ontological ‘entity economics’, economia aziendale, management and accounting literature, there emerges a very different computer oriented ontological literature, which is related to the relatively new branch of systems ontology, that is to computerize the process of knowledge formation and dispersion, for which it is essential the development of quantum computers beyond the present proto-types.