This article considers W. Ross Ashby’s ideas on the nature of embodied minds, as articulated in the last five years of his career. In particular, it attempts to connect his ideas to later work by others in robotics, perception and consciousness. While it is difficult to measure his direct influence on this work, the conceptual links are deep. Moreover, Ashby provides a comprehensive view of the embodied mind, which connects these areas. It concludes that the contemporary fields of situated robotics, ecological perception, and the neural mechanisms of consciousness might all benefit from a reconsideration of Ashby’s later writings.

Key words: representation, embodiment, cognition, information theory, requisite variety

This paper seeks to tease out the systemic character of a body of work that elsewhere in both the primary and secondary literature tends to be described, discussed and applied in fragmented and reductionist terms. The origins of “autopoietic theory” may be traced back to experimental work in cellular biology and neuro-physiology and to the concept of “autopoiesis” (a theory of living systems) itself. From there, it has extended its coverage into a wide range of diverse areas including cognition, perception, emotion, evolution, language, culture, epistemology, the philosophy of science and ethics. Against this background, the paper seeks to outline a high-level systemic interpretation of autopoietic theory; specifically one that integrates its various biological, social and epistemological components and which shows that it is best evaluated and understood as an explanatory whole and not in a reductionist manner.

Key words: Autopoiesis, autopoietic theory, systems, living systems, biology, epistemology

W. Ross Ashby was a founder of both cybernetics and general systems theory. His systems theory outlined the operational structure of models and observers, while his cybernetics outlined the functional architecture of adaptive systems. His homeostat demonstrated how an adaptive control system, equipped with a sufficiently complex repertoire of possible alternative structures, could maintain stability in the face of highly varied and challenging environmental perturbations. The device illustrates his ‘law of requisite variety’, i.e. that a controller needs at least as many internal states as those in the system being controlled. The homeostat provided an early example of how an adaptive control system might be ill-defined vis – vis its designer, nevertheless solve complex problems. Ashby ran into insurmountable difficulties when he attempted to scale up the homeostat, and consequently never achieved the general purpose, brainlike devices that he had initially sought. Nonetheless, the homeostat continues to offer useful insights as to how the large analogue, adaptive networks in biological brains might achieve stability.

Counter response to Zeleny M. & Hufford K. D. (1992) The ordering of the unknown by causing it to order itself. International Journal of General Systems 21(2): 239–253.

Rejoinder to Zeleny M. & Hufford K. D. (1992) The application of autopoiesis in systems analysis: Are autopoietic systems also social systems? International Journal of General Systems 21(2): 145–160.

This paper addresses the problem of social autopoiesis. We argue that to date no adequate solution to the problem of social autopoiesis exists and put this down to the lack of an adequate conception of a social autopoietic unity. We present such a solution based on our reconstruction of autopoiesis theory in a synthesis of Aristotelian/Maturanian metaphysics. From this we derive what we call the Enterprise model and test it against the six-point key of Varela et al. (1974). In light of our solution we then move to a consideration of further problems that may still cast doubt on the legitimacy of the notion of autopoiesis in the social domain. We conclude by arguing that such considerations are in fact groundless and do not materially affect our claims as to the autopoiesis of social systems.

Key words: Autopoiesis, metaphysics, social autopoiesis, systems

Bertalanffy’s so-called “general system theory” (GST) and cybernetics were and are often confused: this calls for clarification. In this article, Bertalanffy’s conceptions and ideas are compared with those developed in cybernetics in order to investigate the differences and convergences. Bertalanffy was concerned with first order cybernetics. Nonetheless, his perspectivist epistemology is also relevant with regard to developments in second order cybernetics, and the latter is therefore also considered to some extent. W. Ross Ashby’s important role as mediator between GST and cybernetics is analysed. The respective basic epistemological approaches, scientific approaches and inherent world views are discussed. We underline the complementarity of cybernetic and “organismic” trends in systems research within the unitary hermeneutical framework of “general systemology.”

Key words: general system theory, general systemology, cybernetics, ludwig von bertalanffy

Counter response to Zeleny M. & Hufford K. D. (1992) The ordering of the unknown by causing it to order itself. International Journal of General Systems 21(2): 239–253.

There are several deep and age-old questions which underly science, philosophy, psychology, and social theory: What is the nature of the world? What is the nature of life? and, What is the nature of human beings in the world? These are fundamentally questions of ontology,{1} that is, What sorts of things ‘are’ in the world? Equally ancient are the philosophical questions of ontogenesis, of how things ‘come to be’: What is the origin of the world? What is the origin of _the _living as one particular sort of thing in that world? and, What is the origin of society or social ordering among the living? And arising from these ontological questions is the fundamental question of epistemology: How do we, as human social beings, come to know the world in which we find ourselves? Both kinds of questions are evolutionary, that is, they are concerned not only with the nature of things in the world but how they come into being and how they change over time as well. These foundational problems – of what things are in the natural world, how they come to be, how they evolve, and how we can know them – are all major issues in contemporary science. They are brought to the fore in the focal paper of this special forum issue, and an international group of experts from several different fields has been chosen to shed light on them in the ensuing forum discussion.

Zelený and Hufford apply the criteria of autopoiesis 1) to Leduc’s osmotic systems to claim that certain non-biological physical systems are autopoietic, and 2) to ‘the human family’ to claim that spontaneous social systems are autopoietic. I find, first, that the authors fail to show either kind of system to be autopoietic, and further, that their claimed success at showing autopoiesis derives from fundamental problems of logical types: in confusing system levels (discrete system components as distinct from the unitary whole) and in conflating system domains (physical, biological, and social). Finally, I contend that by its criteria autopoiesis is restricted to systems in the physical domain – that is, components, transformations, and production in autopoiesis are necessarily physical. While spontaneous systems in the social domain may be marked by relationships among its members (and may even be organizationally closed), they are not autopoietic.

Key words: Autonomy, autopoiesis, autopoietic criteria, living systems, osmotic systems, social systems. spontaneous social systems, system domains, system levels