I am going to use the occasion of the arrival of the (proper-ish) new millennium to write about aspects of my own work. I hope this won’t seem very self-centred or indulgent. The idea came to me at Christmas: like many, I send relatives and friends a “Year Report.” This year I decided, also, to attempt to explain what I’ve been working at in cybernetics for the last 30 years, or maybe my whole life. I know that what I wrote (and present here in reworked form) is under-argued and it might be relatively easy to pick holes in it. I hope you’ll not want to do that: this is an attempt to set a personal second order cybernetic scene which was originally intended for the completely uninformed, rather than a technical piece. On friend commented (about the Christmas version) that not only was it about a constructed world, but it actually constructed that world as well.

In this paper I make the arguments that I see supporting a view of how we can come to know the world we live in. I start from a position in second order cybernetics which turns out to be a Radical Constructivist position. This position is essentially epistemological, and much of this paper is concerned with the act of knowing, crucial when we try to develop an understanding of what we mean when we discuss a field of knowing (knowledge), which is at the root of science. The argument follows a path in which I discuss the essential role of the observer in observing, the creation of constancies between different observings and their exteriorisation as objects which are then represented and used in communication with and between other observers, each unique (and therefore each observing in its own way). This leads to the assertion that the qualities we associate with the objects of our universes are attributes, rather than properties inherent in the objects themselves. At each step in the argument I explore consequences for how we understand the world, in particular through science. I show limitations, new insights and understandings, and reevaluate what we can expect to gain from science. One change is the shift from noun to verb in the consideration of processses – for instance, the study of living rather than life. In this way, I intend to show not only that Radical Constructivism is sensible, but that it does not preclude us having a science. In contrast, it can enrich science by taking on board the sensible. In the process, which science is seen to be the more basic is challenged.

Key words: attributes/qualities, circularity, construct, constancy/pattern, (individual) experience, observing (observed, observer), second-order cybernetics, science

Pask’s great contribution to cybernetics is to take seriously the notion of interaction in the circular processes that lie at the heart of the subject. From his earliest days he worked with interactive systems. His master work, conversation theory, epitomises the interactive system, which he then extended and generalised into the interaction of actors theory. In this paper, the requirements that conversation places on our understanding of participants is presented in the form of a specification. In particular, the ways of behaving and the assumptions under which we have to behave if we are to be able to converse with success are expounded. These are in great contrast to neo‐Darwinian assumptions. The difference between communication by code and communication by conversation is explored, and the primacy of conversational communication is argued. Finally, it is claimed that the ways of behaving and the assumptions that are the requirements for a conversation to take place are presented as personal qualities that were particularly apparent in Pask himself.

Key words: communications, cybernetics, systems, interaction.

In this article I explore, from a cybernetic point-of-view, the associated notions of com-plexity, unmanageability, conversation and trust. Complexity is familiarly presented as a problem of our time. I argue that, when seen through the characterisations of the cyber-netic Law of Requisite Variety, complexity often leads to unmanageability, characterised by a controlling system not having enough variety to control the system it is to control. This leaves two options: to reduce the complexity of the system to be controlled (the option used by dictators controlling peoples), or to admit unmanageability. It is argued that unmanageability can be desirable in offering access to novelty. It is then argued that the primary means by which we can interact (and thus affect the behaviour of another system) should be seen as the conversation rather than encodement. (The alternative, to find another way in which to think of the system displaying complexity is also discussed.) The conditions that support conversation are explored: in particular, the im-plicit obligation to trust other participants in a conversation – and oneself. Trust is considered, and its benefits extolled against a background of experience in a historical context.

In this column I will approach (a cybernetic interpretation of) the relationship between teaching and learning. I will do so by reference to the concepts of Friedrich Froebel, whose name will be familiar from earlier columns. I shall show that, approximately 125 years before the birth of cybernetics, Froebel was already a (second order) cybernetician in his approach to teaching and learning. Thus I shall bring out not only some concepts I believe to be central to an up-to-date cybernetic understanding of teaching and learning, but also I shall bring another person into the fold of proto-cyberneticians. I have excluded a discussion of implementation from this column. However, having made my point, I hope to return to the matter of implementation shortly.

When I submitted my last column, the editor commented that while the arguments I presented concerning Froebel, education and cybernetics were interesting, he would like to know how to use these ideas in the normal university situation he (and most of us) work in. I told him I would address this matter, and I do so here. Not that I have produced a set of practices that might help teaching in a normal university life. Rather, I have shown some existing approaches either demonstrate, or have the potential to demonstrate, what I was writing about. In particular, I present examples in which the approach to education is truly student centred and learning based i.e. ones where the control has passed from the hands of a conventional control system (e.g. teacher) to being more with the controlled, or between both teacher and learner, thus demonstrating that they are true second-order cybernetic systems.

This paper is a memorandum of working with Francisco Varela on our joint paper “Your inside is out and your outside is in.” It is intended to show how we worked together – something of the process and the mood. The paper that was the outcome may be found in the literature (Glanville and Varela 1981), but working notes and outlines, correspondence, and a condensation written some time after the paper are published here for the first time, together with a certain amount of commentary and context. In the quoted material, I have altered nothing save occasionally tuning the language (though I have retained Francisco’s American spellings): the point of this paper is not to correct, extend or otherwise modify the argument, which we developed between 1977 and 1981 (which I continue to believe has validity). This account is a tribute, an example, and a little piece of history.

I shall write of Heinz the human who I loved, rather than of Heinz, the scientist’s, work. Here, I will honour him as a person. There will be a time, later, to honour his contribution.

Not long ago, a colleague of many years asked me a question. He told me of the behaviour of the old lime and horse-hair plaster placed over timber laths that was used until quite recently all over northern Europe as a wall finish. This material has an interesting property: it absorbs and emits moisture, thus helping keep the humidity inside a building within reasonable limits: in other words, it acts as a buffer. What he wanted to know was whether buffers were a topic that had been seriously studied. He assumed they would be part of cybernetics, and, when I heard his question, I immediately replied in the affirmative. I was certain that buffers were part of the area of study of early cybernetics and was sure I had read about them in Ross Ashby’s Introduction to Cybernetics, for me the subject’s essential basic text.