Consideration is given to the relevance of recent discussions of auto¬poiesis to the study of self-organizing systems. Mechanisms that could underly the physical realization of an autopoietic system are discussed. It is concluded that autopoiesis does not, by itself, provide the essential ingredient whose omission has prevented SOS studies from being more productive. Two other important missing ingredients are discussed.

Purpose: This paper sets out to provide arguments and examples supporting the idea that some “wicked” design problems may be usefully approached through the process of bringing forth a self – observing collective, i.e., a community of observers capable of generating and dynamically adjusting a collective standpoint from where new observations can be made. Design/methodology/approach – Interactions within a community of observers can be designed to generate a collective standpoint from where new observations can be made and fed back to the interacting observers, thus ensuring that the collective standpoint also extends the observers’ capacity to observe. Instances of this process are discussed to demonstrate its contribution towards dealing with some wicked design problems. Findings: The paper suggests that one’s capacity to observe, feel, reflect, communicate, and act can be systematically harnessed in a self – observing collective in order to strengthen each member in the face of complex and unstructured problem situations. However, the continued success of the process depends on the effective construction and dynamic maintenance of the collective standpoint that gives the self – observing collective its unique power. Originality/value – The paper borrows certain insights from second – order cybernetics to suggest a way of dealing with ill – structured (and wicked) design problems by facilitating a process of interaction within a community of observers who must be enabled to live with the wickedness of the problem with minimum harm. Relevance: The idea of self – observation in research is a gift from cybernetics, especially from the work of Heinz von Foerster, where the idea was central to the framework of second – order cybernetics or cybernetics of observing systems (as opposed to first – order cybernetics, which is the cybernetics of observed systems). The subject matter of the present paper deals with demonstrating the possibility of coordinating interaction of observers in a group setting so that the group itself acquires the dual status of being an observed system as well as an observing system. Such a group can generate new standpoints or schemata based on the inputs from its members, thus giving rise to new viewpoints.

Proto-organisms probably were randomly aggregated nets of chemical reactions. The hypothesis that contemporary organisms are also randomly constructed molecular automata is examined by modeling the gene as a binary (on-off) device and studying the behavior of large, randomly constructed nets of these binary “genes.” The results suggest that, if each “gene” is directly affected by two or three other “genes,” then such random nets: behave with great order and stability; undergo behavior cycles whose length predicts cell replication time as a function of the number of genes per cell; possess different modes of behavior whose number per net predicts roughly the number of cell types in an organism as a function of its number of genes; and under the stimulus of noise are capable of differentiating directly from any mode of behavior to at most a few other modes of behavior. Cellular differentiation is modeled as a Markov chain among the modes of behavior of a genetic net. The possibility of a general theory of metabolic behavior is suggested. Analytic approaches to the behavior of switching nets are discussed in Appendix 1, and some implications of the results for the origin of self replicating macromolecular systems is discussed in Appendix 6.

This paper comes to grips with the perplexing but important issue of consciousness as manifest in human beings and other organisms; in social organizations and, seemingly without degrading the idea, in other-than-biological systems. The possibility of taking such a radical step as to speak of consciousness within a theoretical frame, and without resorting to the expedient of relegating consciousness to a metatheory about science, arises from combining various developments in Cybernetics or General System Theory, which, though superficially disparate, have a great deal in common; for example, Goguen’s work in category theory (1969, 1975) and the work of Gergely and Nemeti (1977) in nonclassical model theory, the representation, in several different ways, of concurrent (in contrast to serial, or strictly parallel) computation, the work of Varela (1975, 1976), Maturana (1969, 1975), and Von Foerster (1960, 1978), upon organizational closure, Glanville’s (1975) notion of objects and self reference and the work done on conversation theory by my own group. This background is assumed to be familiar since an account appeared in Pask (1975a).

One of the primary problems in statistical mechanics is to find in a system of a large number of freely interacting elements (particles) the distribution of the available energy over all elements which will be observed in most of the cases when the number of elements N1 are counted which possess energies that fall within an “energy-bracket” Ei ± ½δ of width δE; (i = 1, 2, 3, …). In a conservative system in which the number of elements, N, and the available energy, E, are given and remain unchanged, the most probable distribution is, of course, Boltzmann’s distribution function which maximizes the entropy of the system and has the form of a decaying exponential Ni = No exp(-Ei/E*), in which E*, a universal parameter for this system, is the average energy per particle, and expresses through the Boltzmann’s constant k (1.378 ergs/centigrade) the “temperature” T of the system T = E*/k.