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.

Second-order cybernetics (also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, and the New cybernetics ) was developed between 1968 and 1975 in recognition of the power and consequences of cybernetic examinations of circularity. It is cybernetics, when cybernetics is subjected to the critique and the understandings of cybernetics. It is the cybernetics in which the role of the observer is appreciated and acknowledged rather than disguised, as had become traditional in western science: and is thus the cybernetics that considers observing, rather than observed systems. In this article, the rationale from and through the application of which, second-order cybernetics was developed is explored, together with the contributions of the main precursors and protagonists. This is developed from an examination of the nature of feedback and the Black Box both seen as circular systems, where the circularity is taken seriously. The necessary presence of the observer doing the observing is established. The primacy of, for example, conversation over coding as a means of communication is arguedone example of circularity and interactivity in second-order cybernetic systems. Thus second-order cybernetics, understood as proposing an epistemology and (through autopoietic systems) an ontogenesis, is seen as connected to the philosophical position of Constructivism. Examples are given of the application of second-order cybernetics concepts in practice in studies of, and applications in, communication, society, learning and cognition, math and computation, management, and design. It is asserted that the relationship between theory and practice is not essentially one of application: rather they strengthen each other by building on each other in a circularity of their own: the presentation of one before the other results from the process of explanation rather than a necessary, structural dependency. Finally, the future of second-order cybernetics (and of cybernetics in general) is considered. The possibility of escalation from second to third and further orders is considered, as is the notion that second-order cybernetics is, effectively, a conscience for cybernetics. And the popular use of “cyber-” as a prefix is discussed.

Key words: Autopoiesis, communication, control conversation, distinction, epistemology, goal, individual, knowing, memory, mutualism, purpose, reality, recursion, responsibility, time, variety, whole and part.

Medicine is a science of control and should, therefore, be a subject that is particularly open to cybernetic investigation and enlightenment, for cybernetics is concerned with control and communication. Yet, in previous columns, I have reported cases that originate in the cybernetic literature and with the grand old men (yes, I’m afraid, men) of cybernetics, who have discussed systems that are in essence uncontrollable.

This column is concerned with the promotion of cybernetics through an examination of the ethical consequences (implications) of certain cybernetic devices. This journal is the ideal place to try to do this. Not only does it recognise that less usual arguments can have special value, but also it has a history of concern for the ethical. Indeed, in the very?rst issue, Heinz von Foerster presented his thesis on Ethics and Second Order Cybernetics (von Foerster, 1992) and Ole Thyssen developed his interpretation of von Foerster’s notions in his Ethics as Second Order Morality (Thyssen, 1992).