URANOS

Abstract

This chapter presents a generic system model called URANOS, that allows to design complex human-centered systems. It is not aligned to any particular discipline. Rather, it helps to build integral systems in different domains of science and engineering, even though it was originally intended to participate in the design of complex human-centered systems in the framework of ICT. URANOS aims at encouraging interdisciplinary work and reinforces the understanding of complex systems in general. It combines different epistemological standpoints and their corresponding realities into a wholeness. Concretely, the three fundamental standpoints of objectivism, subjectivism and holism are used to holistically handle all relevant entities such as humans, animals, machines and environments. This chapter also addresses systemic features like consciousness, collaboration and symbiosis providing a generic and abstract understanding of them.