This book contains the proceedings of the Seventh National Conference of
the Italian Systems Society. The title, Systemics of Incompleteness and
Quasi-Systems, aims to underline the need for Systemics and Systems
Science to deal with the concepts of incompleteness and quasiness.
Classical models of Systemics are intended to represent comprehensive
aspects of phenomena and processes. They consider the phenomena in their
temporal and spatial completeness. In these cases, possible
incompleteness in the modelling is assumed to have a provisional or
practical nature, which is still under study, and because there is no
theoretical reason why the modelling cannot be complete. In principle,
this is a matter of non-complex phenomena, to be considered using the
concepts of the First Systemics.
When dealing with emergence, there are phenomena which must be modelled
by systems having multiple models, depending on the aspects being taken
into consideration. Here, incompleteness in the modelling is intrinsic,
theoretically relating changes in properties, structures, and status of
system. Rather than consider the same system parametrically changing
over time, we consider sequences of systems coherently. We consider
contexts and processes for which modelling is incomplete, being related
to only some properties, as well as those for which such modelling is
theoretically incomplete-as in the case of processes of emergence and
for approaches considered by the Second Systemics. In this regard, we
consider here the generic concept of quasi explicating such
incompleteness. The concept of quasi is used in various disciplines
including quasi-crystals, quasi-particles, quasi-electric fields, and
quasi-periodicity.
In general, the concept of quasiness for systems concerns their
continuous structural changes which are always meta-stable, waiting for
events to collapse over other configurations and possible forms of
stability; whose equivalence depends on the type of phenomenon under
study. Interest in the concept of quasiness is not related to its
meaning of rough approximation, but because it indicates an
incompleteness which is structurally sufficient to accommodate processes
of emergence and sustain coherence or generate new, equivalent or
non-equivalent, levels.
The conference was devoted to identifying, discussing and understanding
possible interrelationships of theoretical disciplinary improvements,
recognised as having prospective fundamental roles for a new
Quasi-Systemics. The latter should be able to deal with problems related
to complexity in more general and realistic ways, when a system is not
always a system and not always the same system. In this context, the
inter-disciplinarity should consist, for instance, of a constructionist,
incomplete, non-ideological, multiple, contradiction-tolerant,
Systemics, always in progress, and in its turn, emergent.
