Sisemiste

Sisemiste is a term used in philosophy, information science, and cultural studies to describe a focus on the internal logic and organization of systems rather than their external manifestations. The name is derived from the root sis- for 'internal' or 'inside' and the suffix -iste, denoting a school or approach. The concept has appeared in various contexts, often as a critique of externalist or reductionist explanations that neglect internal couplings, feedback, and self-organization.

Core tenets include: the primacy of internal state variables in determining system behavior; the study of feedback loops, recursion, and modularity; an emphasis on self-reference and emergent properties; and a methodological preference for models that expose internal structure, such as state-space representations and subsystem mappings.

In practice, Sisemiste can be encountered in discussions of software architecture, organizational design, and cognitive science, where practitioners analyze how internal components interact to produce overall function. It is not a formal school with standardized doctrines, but rather a label that various authors apply to similar lines of inquiry about how complex systems maintain coherence and adapt.

Reception has been mixed. Proponents argue that focusing on internal organization yields more robust predictions and scalable designs. Critics note that the term can be vague, overlapping with existing ideas in systems theory and cybernetics, and that empirical validation is challenging outside concrete domains.

Notable related topics include systems theory, cybernetics, internalism, and holism.