Excerpt: I propose then to mean when I say cybernetics, the art and science of reflexive understanding, for this makes clear the circularity that has been the hallmark of cybernetics by specifying what cyberneticians most generally do. Please note that reflexive is generally understood in two ways, both involving a turning back into a self. The distinction hinges on the circuit through which this turning back takes place. Reflex actions (such as the knee-jerk), as we usually think of them, involve being in a situation without reflecting. We are certainly interested in this kind of understanding, the kind that emerges from immersing yourself in a situation and knowing how to behave. Such a circuit might be thought of as a small-circuit reflexivity. On the other hand, second-order cybernetics has certainly allowed a long-circuit reflexivity, including a reflective knower in the act of understanding in a situation, for it is this reflexivity that has allowed cybernetics to indeed be applied to itself. In fact, it is precisely through a long-circuit reflexivity that assumptions embedded in a small circuit can be questioned – perhaps allowing the small-circuit reflexivity to become “short-circuited” and exploding our assumed and tacit world.

There is for me, as a researcher and teacher of researchers, a certain engagement with Funes’ wonderment of detail that an initial exegesis provides. So much of a world never becomes visible because we do not allow ourselves to see such detail, often seeing and feeling only those abstractions whose labels our professional languages assert as “what is really going on. ” Funes provides a vehicle, albeit an extreme one, for making one see, as Needham (1971) notes in his reference to Funes, like an “unusually perceptive and diligent ethnographer newly arrived in the field” (p. xix).

[opening paragraph]: For the past decade or so, I have been engaged in a research project of sorts, examining the consequences and entailments of operating – in effect, living – from a second order cybernetic perspective. This engagement has included, as domains of interest, practices such as researching, “helping” (organizational consultancy, community development, family therapy, etc.), and teaching/ learning. However, I have also been concerned with blurring the distinctions between these different practices (such as, research as intervention, helping as research (or, at least, helping as reflective practice), etc.). Of course, this has involved my own work as a kind of autoethnography of second order cybernetic practice – but it has also involved work with diverse others. It has, for example, involved students studying a change process in their own organizations, with all of the reflexive issues involved in such an endeavor. This last, from a cybernetic standpoint, involves bearing in mind my own relationship to the students, as they become “subjects” and “researchers” (as do I) in the same interview process. My questions to them provide opportunities for a reexamination (and change of) their own research/ managerial work, as well as for mine.

Inspired by Heinz von Foerster’s notions of observing systems as a merging of second-order and first-order understanding, we explore the multiple senses of observing frames. We draw organically from ethnographic observations of visitors in a regional science center to reconceptualize processes of meaning construction in designed learning environments more generally. Von Foerster’s ethical and aesthetic imperatives are used to develop an understanding of science learning as an emergent co-improvisation between designers, researchers, interactors and visitors. Links are drawn with Luhmann’s paradoxy of observing systems, while implications for design processes are considered.

Don Schon’s ideas of reflective practice and organizational learning are connected with second order cybernetics. This connection enables a rethinking of a science center in terms of the ways that science is presented and “understood” and the organizational relationships, at all levels, that allow for and sustain the process of that rethinking. Through a conversation, emergent tensions (including the multiple hearings of a generative metaphor) are explored that point to the very frames within which a science center organizes itself. A scaffolding of an action research program for the science center is offered, emanating from questions raised in the conversation. Finally, a reformulation of some of Schon’s key ideas that motivated the project is offered – from a reflection-in-action to a reflection-in-inter-action, linked to a second order organizational

This paper expounds a way of seeing organizations that fits with second order cybernetics. It shows the relationship between cybernetics and radical constructivism and discusses the meaning of autonomy as it is used by cyberneticians. Implications for organizational members, managers, researchers and interventionists are elaborated.