Purpose: Commenting on the transcript of a lecture. Findings: The document reconstructs the development of the original 1973 lecture by Heinz von Foerster into his best-known paper, On Constructing a Reality. Many aspects of that paper can be identified as being shaped through interaction with the audience. Implications: The lecture documented here was a forerunner of a central paper in constructivism.

Zwei ältere Herren, einer Biophysiker, der andere Psychologe, treffen sich, um über die Vergangenheit zu sprechen. Das könnte eine ganz alltägliche Geschichte sein. Allerdings handelt es sich bei den beiden Protagonisten um die Väter des Radikalen Konstruktivismus. Der Bitte ihre Verlegers, ein Tonband mitlaufen zu lassen, kamen sie gerne nach. Ein Glücksfall, wie sich im Nachhinein herausstellt. in einem ungemein spannenden, quicklebendigen Dialog werden komplexe wissenschaftliche Fragen auf allgemeinverständliche Weise thematisiert: Was haben Kurzwellen und Kühe gemein? Warum vergräbt ein Eichhörnchen (...) eine Nuss? Was verbindet diese Frage mit der folgenden: Was kommt zuerst - Sprache oder Bewusstsein? (shrink)

Dedicated to the life and work of Heinz Von Foerster, this is a double issue of the journal "Cybernetics and Human Knowing".

Excerpt: In 1995, the Leo Apostel Centre in Brussels, Belgium, organised an international conference called ``Einstein meets Magritte''. Nobel prize winner Ilya Prigogine held the opening lecture at the conference, and Heinz von Foerster's lecture was scheduled last... Heinz von Foerster was enchanted by the conference theme and -- in the spirit of surrealist Belgian painter René Magritte -- had chosen an appropriate title for his talk: ``Ceci n'est pas Albert Einstein''. ... [H]e was delighted to (...) grant the organisers the following interview, in which he tells us about an even longer journey -- that of his remarkable life and scientific career. (shrink)

Context: In this empirical and conceptual paper on the historical, philosophical, and epistemological backgrounds of second-order cybernetics, the emergence of a significant pedagogical component to Heinz von Foerster’s work during the last years of the Biological Computer Laboratory is placed against the backdrop of social and intellectual movements on the American landscape. Problem: Previous discussion in this regard has focused largely on the student radicalism of the later 1960s. A wider-angled view of the American intellectual counterculture is needed. (...) However, this historical nexus is complicated and more often dismissed than brought into clear focus. Method: This essay assembles a historical sequence of archival materials for critical analysis, linked to a conceptual argument eliciting from those materials the second-order cybernetic concepts of observation, recursion, and paradox. Results: In this period, von Foerster found the “positive of the negative” in the social and intellectual unrest of that moment and cultivated those insights for the broader constitution of a new cognitive orientation. Implications: As a successful student of his own continuing course on heuristics, von Foerster left the academic mainstream to ally his constructivist epistemology with the systems counterculture. (shrink)

I point out that Future State Maximization as introduced in the target article can take place on several different levels within the same system. Furthermore, the fact that the space in which….

Summary: Because this book has something of the storytelling of cheerful meetings, von Foerster is made more accessible to the novice; however, it does not lose any of its intellectual sharpness. Henri Atlan and Edgar Morin, in particular, greatly influenced by von Foerster and quite famous in French-speaking countries, give a helping hand to those who wish to explore their work further from the perspective of von Foerster's vision and thoughts. And Atlan and Morin take also the (...) credit for the fact that von Foerster has become better known in the French-speaking community. Let us a hope the book will contribute to the further spread of von Foerster's ideas. (shrink)

This article praises the development of second order cybernetics by von Foerster, Maturana, and Varela as an important step in deepening our understanding of the bio-psychological foundation of the dynamics of information, cognition, and communication. Luhmann's development of the theory into the realm of social communication is seen as a necessary and important move. The triple autopoietic differentiation between biological, psychological, and social-communicative autopoiesis and the introduction of a technical concept of meaning is central. Finally, the paper shows that (...) second order cybernetics lacks explicit and ontological concepts of emotion, meaning, and a concept of signs. C. S. Peirce's theory is introduced for this purpose. It is then shown, through Varela's development of Spencer Brown's ‘Laws of Form’ from a dual to a dynamic triadic categorical structure, that both theories are triadic and second order, and therefore can be fruitfully fused to a Cybersemiotics. (shrink)

Context: Many AI and machine-learning techniques are primarily focused on past-to-future extrapolations of statistical regularities in large amounts of data. We introduce a method that builds on an….

Summary: The aim of this collection is to provide a two-fold access to von Foerster's legacy and his work at the Biological Computer Laboratory, the institution he founded and directed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1958 to 1976. It represents a precious contribution for the understanding of BCL, a crucial but still not properly understood chapter in the history of cybernetics and, more generally, of cognitive science. It is greatly recommended.

In a time in which an exuberant, trans-classical, non-trivial machine culture redesigns terminologies, remodels logics, produces new evidence, and reorganizes semantic resources, a new, neocybernetic regime of truth is taking shape. Many of our recent self-descriptions and theory formations are coined by our media-technological condition. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of Niklas Luhmann, especially in his inherent narrative of the history of rationality. This essay attempts to reconstruct Luhmann’s redescription of European rationality, especially the media- and (...) machine-historical conditions that remain apparent in Luhmann’s account. The decisive issue is that Luhmann’s history of rationality reveals the technological unconscious of systems theory and indeed the epochal imaginary it belongs to. With the help of the theories of machines developed by von Foerster, Simondon and Günther, Luhmann’s oeuvre must be read as probably the most striking conceptual edifice to emerge from what could be called the 20th-century’s epochal technological shift of meaning. (shrink)

Context: The enactive paradigm in the cognitive sciences is establishing itself as a strong and comprehensive alternative to the computationalist mainstream. However, its own particular historical roots have so far been largely ignored in the historical analyses of the cognitive sciences. Problem: In order to properly assess the enactive paradigm’s theoretical foundations in terms of their validity, novelty and potential future directions of development, it is essential for us to know more about the history of ideas that has led to (...) the current state of affairs. Method: The meaning of the disappearance of the field of cybernetics and the rise of second-order cybernetics is analyzed by taking a closer look at the work of representative figures for each of the phases: Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow for the early wave of cybernetics, Ashby for its culmination, and von Foerster for the development of the second-order approach. Results: It is argued that the disintegration of cybernetics eventually resulted in two distinct scientific traditions, one going from symbolic AI to modern cognitive science on the one hand, and the other leading from second-order cybernetics to the current enactive paradigm. Implications: We can now understand that the extent to which the cognitive sciences have neglected their cybernetic parent is precisely the extent to which cybernetics had already carried the tendencies that would later find fuller expression in second-order cybernetics. (shrink)

La mayor parte de análisis de las actuales sociedades cibernéticas basados en la obra de Deleuze y Guattari las suelen concebir como sociedades de control y servidumbre maquínica. Esta caracterización se debe a que su concepto de cibernética se reduce a la cibernética de primer orden. Este artículo expone cómo las máquinas no-triviales concebidas por la cibernética de segundo orden permiten desarrollar los aspectos más socialmente emancipadores de la ontología maquínica deleuzoguattariana, sin necesidad de oponerse a las sociedades cibernéticas.

The main goal of this article is to use the epistemological framework of a specific version of Cognitive Constructivism to address Piaget’s central problem of knowledge construction, namely, the re-equilibration of cognitive structures. The distinctive objective character of this constructivist framework is supported by formal inference methods of Bayesian statistics, and is based on Heinz von Foerster’s fundamental metaphor of objects as tokens for eigen-solutions. This epistemological perspective is illustrated using some episodes in the history of chemistry concerning (...) the definition or identification of chemical elements. Some of von Foerster’s epistemological imperatives provide general guidelines of development and argumentation. (shrink)

Context: By proposing to regard objects as “tokens for eigenbehavior,” von Foerster’s seminal paper opposes the intuitive subject-object dualism of traditional philosophy, which considers objects to be instances of an external world Problem: We argue that this proposal has two implications, one for epistemology and one for the demarcation between the natural sciences and the humanities. Method: Our arguments are based on insights gained in computational models and from reviewing the contributions to this special issue. Results: Epistemologically, von (...) class='Hi'>Foerster’s proposal suggests that what is called “reality” could be seen as an ensemble of eigenforms generated by the eigenbehavior that arises in the interaction of multiple dynamics. Regarding science, the contributions to this special issue demonstrate that the concept of eigenbehavior can be applied to a variety of disciplines from the formal and natural sciences to the humanities. Its universal applicability provides a strong argument for transdisciplinarity, and its emphasis on the observer points in the direction of an observer-inclusive science. Implications: Thinking in eigenbehavior may not only have implications for tearing down the barriers between sciences and humanities, a better understanding of eigenbehaviors may also have profound effects on our understanding of ourselves. This also opens the way to innovative behavior design/modification technologies. (shrink)

The present debate in legal theory is dominated by an unfruitful schism. On the one hand, analytical theories are concerned with the positivity of law, running the risk of missing the law's relation to society. On the other hand, sociological approaches analyze all sorts of social interactions of law, but have developed no conceptual tools to do justice to the autonomy of law. The theory of autopoiesis offers law a chance of getting round the falsely posed alternative between an autonomous (...) rule system or a socially conditioned decision-making process. It is a theory of law that sees the law's autonomy in the self-reproduction of a communication network and understands its relation to society as interference with other autonomous communication networks. Building on the ideas of Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster and Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner uses the concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis to develop a concept of law as a hypercyclically closed social system. This book will stand as a landmark in legal theory and become a standard point of departure in the sociology of law. (shrink)

Context: At present, we lack a common understanding of both the process of cognition in living organisms and the construction of knowledge in embodied, embedded cognizing agents in general, including future artifactual cognitive agents under development, such as cognitive robots and softbots. Purpose: This paper aims to show how the info-computational approach (IC) can reinforce constructivist ideas about the nature of cognition and knowledge and, conversely, how constructivist insights (such as that the process of cognition is the process of life) (...) can inspire new models of computing. Method: The info-computational constructive framework is presented for the modeling of cognitive processes in cognizing agents. Parallels are drawn with other constructivist approaches to cognition and knowledge generation. We describe how cognition as a process of life itself functions based on info-computation and how the process of knowledge generation proceeds through interactions with the environment and among agents. Results: Cognition and knowledge generation in a cognizing agent is understood as interaction with the world (potential information), which by processes of natural computation becomes actual information. That actual information after integration becomes knowledge for the agent. Heinz von Foerster is identified as a precursor of natural computing, in particular bio computing. Implications: IC provides a framework for unified study of cognition in living organisms (from the simplest ones, such as bacteria, to the most complex ones) as well as in artifactual cognitive systems. Constructivist content: It supports the constructivist view that knowledge is actively constructed by cognizing agents and shared in a process of social cognition. IC argues that this process can be modeled as info-computation. (shrink)

This article analyzes the role of entropy in Bayesian statistics, focusing on its use as a tool for detection, recognition and validation of eigen-solutions. “Objects as eigen-solutions” is a key metaphor of the cognitive constructivism epistemological framework developed by the philosopher Heinz von Foerster. Special attention is given to some objections to the concepts of probability, statistics and randomization posed by George Spencer-Brown, a figure of great influence in the field of radical constructivism.

_Neocybernetics and Narrative_ opens a new chapter in Bruce Clarke’s project of rethinking narrative and media through systems theory. Reconceiving interrelations among subjects, media, significations, and the social, this study demonstrates second-order systems theory’s potential to provide fresh insights into the familiar topics of media studies and narrative theory. A pioneer of systems narratology, Clarke offers readers a synthesis of the neocybernetic theories of cognition formulated by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, incubated by cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster, (...) and cultivated in Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. From this foundation, he interrogates media theory and narrative theory through a critique of information theory in favor of autopoietic conceptions of cognition. Clarke’s purview includes examinations of novels, movies, and even _Aramis_, Bruno Latour’s idiosyncratic meditation on a failed plan for an automated subway. Clarke declares the era of the cyborg to have ended, laid to rest as the ontology of technical objects is brought into differential coordination with operations of living, psychic, and social systems. The second-order discourse of cognition destabilizes the usual sense of cognition as conscious awareness, revealing the possibility of nonconscious and nonhuman forms of sentience. (shrink)

Purpose: The inspection of the World Wide Web reveals a multitude of speculative, frequently contradictory diagnoses: the dynamic evolution of the media demonstrably correlates with a multitude of competing descriptions. It is the author's attempt and the purpose of this paper to systematize the descriptive approaches from a meta-observer's point of view. Approach: The author takes advantage of a constructivist "philosophy of distinctions" (Heinz von Foerster), employing it as a strategy of presentation and reflection. He starts with some (...) general remarks describing this philosophy of distinctions, then using a number of central guiding differences (e.g., mass communication/individual communication, private/public etc.) as a suitable instrument to systematize a wide variety of descriptions. In the concluding section, he outlines an analytical method of meta-observation and specifies, in an abstract way, tendencies of potential discourse change which can be seen regarding the WWW and the emerging worlds of communication. It is demonstrated in what ways such a method could be helpful in seeking out the changes and the varying assessments of the life-world cyberspace. Conclusion: The author comes to the conclusion that the analytical method of observing distinctions that has been proposed here is capable of continual refinement; its design is sufficiently complex to permit a situation-specific activation and immediate reaction whenever unexpected developmental tendencies emerge and the contours of digital worlds of communication begin to change again and again. (shrink)

This article deals with the research tradition of Radical Constructivism and proposes four central claims for its theoretical, methodological and epistemic orientation and status. First, Radical Constructivism should be viewed as a comprehensive empirical research tradition with an emphasis on cognition, learning, living systems and organization which, in addition, developed a new general methodology for scientific operations. Second, the main opponent of Radical Constructivism, especially in the research program of Heinz von Foerster, does not lie in philosophical or (...) epistemological terrains but in the area of the general scientific methodology and in its conventional mode of exploring the world. Third, Radical Constructivism proposed a new and alternative way for scientific explorations and world-making which produces, additionally, tangible and non-trivial effects with respect to scientific outcomes. Fourth, due to this new way of scientific world-making and due to its novel scientific methodology Radical Constructivism was only marginally interested in epistemological issues. Instead, the empirical research tradition of Radical Constructivism offered intriguing answers why the varieties of scientific realism and its allies like scientific objectivity seem so appealing and almost self-evident. -/- . (shrink)

The concept of spontaneous order is an important framework in many fields of research in the natural and social sciences today, and it bears heavily on methodological problems related to economics in particular. In fact, all domains of scientific and philosophical research where it can be maintained intelligibly that an undesigned but nevertheless effective order has emerged solely through the interaction of the constituent parts of a given system and also through the interaction of this system as a whole with (...) its environment fall under what is now often preferably called the "paradigm of auto-organization". This paradigm can be traced back to Leibniz (Dobuzinkis 1989, p. 245) or even to the Spanish Jesuits of the Salamanca School of the XVIth century (Lepage 1983, p. 347), and a lot of scientific work has now been done from within its conceptual framework, for instance Varela & Maturana's theory of "autopoiesis", Heinz von Foerster's second generation cybernetic models, Ilya Prigogine's thermodynamics of open systems and dissipative structures, and chaos theory. In economics, the concept of social spontaneous order is intimately linked with Friedrich Hayek's work, and Hayek has himself insisted on the effective kinship of such approaches (Hayek 1979, p. 158). One can say that there is today in economics a full-fledged Theory of Spontaneous Order (TSO) which articulates four distinct arguments. (shrink)

Context: The term “second-order cybernetics” was introduced by von Foerster in 1974 as the “cybernetics of observing systems,” both the act of observing systems and systems that observe. Since then, the term has been used by many authors in articles and books and has been the subject of many conference panels and symposia. Problem: The term is still not widely known outside the fields of cybernetics and systems science and the importance and implications of the work associated with second-order (...) cybernetics is not yet widely discussed. I claim that the transition from cybernetics to second-order cybernetics is a fundamental scientific revolution that is not restricted to cybernetics or systems science. Second-order cybernetics can be regarded as a scientific revolution for the general methodology of science and for many disciplines as well. Method: I first review the history of cybernetics and second-order cybernetics. Then I analyze the major contents of von Foerster’s fundamental revolution in science and present it as a general model for an alternative methodology of science. Subsequently, I present an example of practicing second-order socio-cybernetics from within. I describe some consequences of doing science from within, and I suggest some new horizons for second-order cybernetics. Results: Second-order cybernetics leads to a new foundation for conducting science and offers important contributions for a new way of organizing science. It expands the conception of science so that it can more adequately deal with living systems. Implications: Second-order cybernetics extends the traditional scientific approach by bringing scientists within the domain of what is described and analyzed. It provides models of research processes for when the scientist is within the system being studied. In this way it offers a new foundation for research in the social sciences, in management science, and in other fields such as the environmental sciences or the life sciences. Keywords: Epistemology, general scientific methodology, cybernetics, social sciences, action research, Heinz von Foerster. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Philosophic Foundations of Mimetic Theory and Cognitive Science(Including Artificial Intelligence)Jean-Pierre Dupuy (bio)In the mid 1970s I discovered at the same time cognitive science and mimetic theory. Being a philosopher with a scientific background, I immediately brought them together and tried to reconceptualize the latter in terms of the former. In a sense, I haven't stopped doing that in the last 45 years. That is why I feel fully (...) at home with the goals pursued by the organizers of this conference.I do not believe it is feasible or even desirable to operate the rapprochement between the two disciplines at a global level. The history of cognitive science is exceedingly involved, and the part played by artificial intelligence in it compared to the part played by the neurosciences has varied greatly over time.1 Only a piecemeal approach makes sense. I present here four short case studies that cover the whole period, from the beginnings in cybernetics to today's artificial intelligence (AI).In order to better situate these studies within a broader frame, I propose the diagram in Figure 1. To comment on it would require more time than available for my whole presentation. Let me just say the following. [End Page 1]It is essential to distinguish between two kinds of AI. The first to bear this name was launched by economist Herbert Simon and computer scientist Allan Newell at a Dartmouth conference in 1956. It was based on the premise that thinking is computing, with this computation bearing on sentences of a "language of thought" implementable in a digital computer. It turns out that this AI(1) was progressively substituted from the 1980s onward by an AI(2), which, to some extent, was a return to a fundamental result obtained by cybernetics in 1943. Neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch and mathematician Walter Pitts had constructed a mathematical model of a network of elementary calculators called "neurons" and explored its properties. The capacity to "think" was one of these. It was not situated at the elementary level, as was the case in AI(1), but it emerged at the collective level from the interactions between the neurons.This model was heavily criticized by the supporters of AI(1),2 and its first implementations, in the notorious "Perceptron" in particular (1957), were pitiful failures. However, the emergence of "second-order cybernetics" under the guidance of cybernetician Heinz von Foerster and the theory of complex, self-organizing systems that it helped develop, in cooperation and rivalry with similar efforts in the physical sciences, enabled the neural network model to come to a second life under different names: formal neurons, deep learning, big data, and the like. Together, they constitute AI(2).The following network of influences wouldn't have been possible without its stem, that is, the boxes containing the names of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. The former revolutionized logic by showing that reasoning about arithmetic and arithmetic are one and the same, insofar as it is possible to code in a 1-to-1 fashion propositions about integers (for instance, "7 is a prime number") by means of integers. The latter demonstrated that some mechanisms can self-transcend inasmuch as they generate an ensemble of outputs that cannot be defined mechanistically. Later, John von Neumann, who is credited along with Alan Turing with having invented the digital computer, would use this logical possibility to define complexity: A mechanism is complex if it is capable of generating one more complex than itself. The gate was open for the theories of complex, self-organizing systems to thrive and, by way of consequence, for AI(2) to emerge.fascination with modelsHerbert Simon (1916–2001), winner of the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on what he called "bounded rationality," is generally considered to be one [End Page 2] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.of the founders of artificial intelligence. Some cognitive scientists still rely on the computer program that he devised with Alan Newell to simulate the creative processes of human thought—a program aptly named "General Problem Solver." The title of one of his principal works, The Sciences of the... (shrink)

Context: Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy that deals with methods, foundations, and implications of science. It is a theory of how to create scientific knowledge. Presently, there is widespread agreement on how to do science, namely conjectures, ideally in the form of a mathematical model, and refutations, testing the model using empirical evidence. Problem: Many social scientists are using a conception of science created for the physical sciences. Expanding philosophy of science so that it more successfully encompasses (...) social systems would create new avenues of inquiry. Two dimensions could be added to philosophy of science: the amount of attention paid to the observer and the amount of impact of a theory on the system described. Method: My approach is to illuminate underlying assumptions. I claim that there are at least three epistemologies and that they can be combined to form a more robust conception of knowledge and of how to do research. There are at least four models and four basic elements being used by scientists. Results: The article identifies the logical propositions underlying second-order science. It suggests strategies for developing second-order science. And it describes several methods that can be used to practice second-order science, including how past theories have not only described but also changed the phenomenon being studied. Implications: The task for members of the scientific community, particularly social scientists, is to practice second-order science and to develop further its theories and methods. A practical implication is to accept methods for acting as well as theories as a contribution to science, since methods explicitly define the role of an observer/ participant. Constructivist content: The paper is an extension of the work of Heinz von Foerster and other second-order cyberneticians. (shrink)

This article examines central tensions in cybernetics, defined as the study of self-organization, communication, automated feedback in organisms, and other distributed informational networks, from its wartime beginnings to its contemporary adaptations. By examining aspects of both first- and second-order cybernetics, the article introduces an epistemological standpoint that highlights the tension between its definition as a theory of recursion and a theory of control, prediction, and actionability. I begin by examining the historical outcomes of the Macy Conferences to provide a context (...) for cybernetics’ initial development for scientific epistemology, ethics, and socio-political thought. I draw extensively from Norbert Wiener, Heinz von Foerster, Ross Ashby, and Gregory Bateson, key figures of this movement. I then elaborate upon certain premises of cybernetics to further elucidate an intellectual history from which to begin to construct a cybernetic epistemology. I conclude by offering the second-order cybernetic concept of recursivity as a model and method for ethico-epistemological questioning that can account for both the constructive potential and the limitations of cybernetics in science and society. (shrink)

We provide an overview of the life and work of Graham Barnes, who was strongly influenced by Gregory Bateson, and who collaborated with several other cyberneticians and constructivists, in particular, Gordon Pask and Heinz von Foerster. After having left the USA for Sweden, he commuted between Stockholm and Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Rijeka, where he taught his own integration of second-order cybernetics and psychotherapy.

During the sixties, a most curious symbiosis took hold between Heinz von Foerster then the Director of a top-notch and lavishly funded US laboratory [Biological Computer Laboratory, 1958–1975] and the Chilean neuroscientist Humberto R. Maturana professor at the Universidad de Chile. The chance encounter between them triggered a long-lasting friendship and a fundamental change in our understanding of Systems Science. In particular the contributions of Biology of Cognition and Autopoiesis are important to understand this change and the years (...) 1968–1973 are particularly relevant. In this period, Maturana published, as a Technical Report of BCL, the foundational document The Neurophysiology of Cognition. Later, in 1973, the book De Maquinas y Seres Vivos put forward the notion of Autopoietic Systems. Also, between 1971 and 1973, the Allende government tried to cybernitize the Chilean economy with the SYNCO project. In that project, Maturana and von Foerster played a role by teaching Cybernetics to the engineers and administrators of this technological dream. During this same time, Cybernetics was important in Chile and Professors Maturana and von Foerster although not directly involved in the day-to-day running of SYNCO were important in that unique effort. When a military coup deposed Allende and sent Chile into a tailspin of right-wing retribution, von Foerster, a foreigner who loved Chile and its people, did his outmost to assure the safety of many people involved in this unique Latin American Cybernetics dream. (shrink)

Context: The thoroughly second-order cybernetic underpinnings of naturalist theatre have gone almost entirely unremarked in the literature of both theatre studies and cybernetics itself. As a result, rich opportunities for the two fields to draw mutual benefit and break new ground through both theoretical and empirical investigations of these underpinnings have, thus far, gone untapped. Problem: The field of cybernetics continues to remain academically marginalized for, among other things, its alleged lack of experimental rigor. At the same time, the field (...) of theatre studies finds itself at an impasse between post-structuralist semioticians and embodied cognitivists regarding key onto-epistemological issues. A program of research framing and utilizing naturalist theatre as a second-order cybernetic/cybersemiotic laboratory holds much promise in addressing both matters and lending credence to Ross Ashby’s assertion that “the discovery that two fields are related leads to each branch helping in the development of the other.” Method: After establishing the nature of the onto-epistemological deadlock within theatre studies, this article examines the application of cybernetic heuristics within naturalistic theatre, leading to a second-order cybernetic analysis of its processes of production and reception and the outline of an experimental program for exploring these processes further. Results: Foundations for a model of naturalist theatre as a cybersemiotic laboratory grounded in a novel operationalization of Gordon Pask’s conversation theory. Implications: The proposed laboratory could result in the generation of quantitative and qualitative research pertaining to several dimensions of second-order cybernetics; particularly cybersemiotics, which, as a result, may end up better positioned to help dissolve onto-epistemological deadlocks between constructivists and realists of all stripes across the academy and beyond. Constructivist content: I argue that an analysis of naturalistic theatre’s processes of meaning-making filtered through the constructivist ontological agnosticism of second-order cybernetics offers a productive middle way forward for those on both sides of the social constructivist/embodied cognitive realist divide, within and beyond theatre studies. The article draws upon the works of Gregory Bateson, Søren Brier, Ranulph Glanville, Heinz von Foerster, and Niklas Luhmann. (shrink)

L’articolo si propone di indagare le implicazioni ecologiche di due differenti tendenze sistemiche: La General Systems Theory di Ludwig von Bertalanffy, che fa da cornice alla Systems Ecology di Eugene Odum; La Second-Order Cybernetics elaborata da Heinz von Foerster, Humberto Maturana e Niklas Luhmann, che costituisce la matrice di un nuovo paradigma ecologico denominato General Ecology. Nell’articolo verranno comparate la GST e la SOC in relazione ai loro differenti modi di intendere il sistema e la sua genesi; il (...) ruolo dell’osservatore nella definizione dei confini di un sistema; e la relazione tra sistema e ambiente. Verrà mostrato come la SOC, mettendo in causa il principio del controllo gerarchico della GST, conduce alla nozione di differenze ecologiche, con la quale si indica una pluralità di diadi sistema-ambiente, problematizzando così la nozione di ambiente come riferimento fisico e oggettivo. (shrink)

Rather than assume a unitary cybernetics, I ask how its disunity mattered to the history of the human sciences in the United States from about 1940 to 1980. I compare the work of four prominent social scientists – Herbert Simon, George Miller, Karl Deutsch, and Talcott Parsons – who created cybernetic models in psychology, economics, political science, and sociology with the work of anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and relate their interpretations of cybernetics to those of such well-known cyberneticians as Norbert Wiener, (...) Warren McCulloch, W. Ross Ashby, and Heinz von Foerster. I argue that viewing cybernetics through the lens of disunity – asking what was at stake in choosing a specific cybernetic model – shows the complexity of the relationship between first-order cybernetics and the postwar human sciences, and helps us rethink the history of second-order cybernetics. (shrink)

Purpose: The problem of entering a “mainstream” is analyzed by looking at the problem of recursive splitting in the use of constructivism, illustrating this problem with the special case of personal construct psychology. Problem: In this opinion article I outline a number of issues intrinsic to radical constructivism, and also to other less radical forms of constructivism, which tend to lead its users in the opposite direction to any detectable “mainstream,” indeed leading them steadily away from any unifying flow that (...) might eventually leak into a mainstream. Method: By analyzing the “constructivist field” with regard to a series of “miss-takes” easily made by those approaching the radical constructivist outlook, and also with regard to an intrinsic tendency towards idiosyncratic individualism, I want to show the deepening degree of fragmentizing and splitting that I regard as endemic to the constructivist epistemology. I also describe how the metaphoric power of the term “constructivism” has been lost and has now become a dead metaphor, and I use the “gyres” metaphor of W. B. Yeats to describe the impending chaos and dissolution of the constructivisms. Implications: I make six main suggestions as to how this state of events might possibly be slowed down or even recovered from, thus avoiding ongoing deterioration and its self-disintegrating conclusion. (shrink)