Roumiana Nikolaeva-Hubenova, Bulgarian Academy of Science, Sofia, Bulgaria

Abstract: The holistic approach to description of living systems is based on the concept that the living organism is itself part, participant, and contributor to its world of observation. Two fundamentally different forms of description, endo- and exo, corresponding to different epistemological attitudes, in relationship to whether the observer is situated in or out of the system, reflect the constraints of the observer, concerning the notion of time. As the informational detachment is only possible if accompanied with temporal (exophysical) detachment, the endo- and exo- descriptions of the system have to be compatible. A mathematical approach to this problem is discussed.

Keywords: discrete-time theory, mathematical modelling, endo/exo-description, living and cognitive systems