Agrawalla R. K. (2015) When Newton meets Heinz Von Foerster, complexity vanishes and simplicity reveals. Kybemetes 44(8/9): 1193–1206. https://cepa.info/6256
Purpose: Complexity is the real beast that baffles everybody. Though there are increasing inter-disciplinary discussions on it, yet it is scantly explored. The purpose of this paper is to bring a new and unique dimension to the discourse assimilating the important ideas of two towering scientists of their time, Newton and Heinz von Foerster. In the tradition of Foersterian second-order cybernetics the paper attempts to build a bridge from a cause-effect thinking to a thinking oriented towards “understanding understanding” and in the process presents a model of “Cybernetics of Simplification” indicating a path to simplicity from complexity. Design/methodology/approach – The design of research in the paper is exploratory and the paper takes a multidisciplinary approach. The model presented in the paper builds on analytics and systemics at the same time. Findings: Simplicity can be seen in complex systems or situations if one can construct the reality (be that the current one that is being experienced or perceived or the future one that is being desired or envisaged) through the Cybernetics of Simplification model, establishing the effect-cause-and-effect and simultaneously following the frame of iterate and infer as a circular feedback loop; in the tradition of cybernetics of cybernetics. Research limitations/implications – It is yet to be applied. Practical implications: The model in the paper seems to have far reaching implications for complex problem solving and enhancing understanding of complex situations and systems. Social implications – The paper has potential to provoke new ideas and new thinking among scholars of complexity. Originality/value – The paper presents an original idea in terms of Cybernetics of Simplification building on the cybernetics of the self-observing system. The value lies in the unique perspective that it brings to the cybernetics discussions on complexity and simplification.
Context: Society is faced with “wicked” problems of environmental sustainability, which are inherently multiperspectival, and there is a need for explicitly constructivist and perspectivist theories to address them. Problem: However, different constructivist theories construe the environment in different ways. The aim of this paper is to clarify the conceptions of environment in constructivist approaches, and thereby to assist the sciences of complex systems and complex environmental problems. Method: We describe the terms used for “the environment” in von Uexküll, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, and analyse how their conceptions of environment are connected to differences of perspective and observation. Results: We show the need to distinguish between inside and outside perspectives on the environment, and identify two very different and complementary logics of observation, the logic of distinction and the logic of representation, in the three constructivist theories. Implications: Luhmann’s theory of social systems can be a helpful perspective on the wicked environmental problems of society if we consider carefully the theory’s own blind spots: that it confines itself to systems of communication, and that it is based fully on the conception of observation as indication by means of distinction.
Arinin E., Lyutaeva M. & Markova N. (2022) Аутопойезис религии как социальной субсистемы: Рецепция идей Н. Лумана российскими исследователями религии [Autopoiesis of religion as a social subsystem: Reception of N. Luhmann’s ideas by Russian researchers of religion]. Религиоведение 1: 72–81.
The article offers an analysis of a number of Russian studies of the work of Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998), focusing on the understanding of religion as a special autopoietic subsystem of society. The authors describe the formation of “differences” in the religious sphere of social life and their “autopoiesis.” The first ideas about religion as the “faith” (“вѣра”) of the prince and the court elite are implicitly recorded from the 10th – 11th centuries in the context of “theological,” reflections on “true piety,” which, like “truth” and “law,” opposed “lie” and “lawlessness.” The term “religion,” generally accepted today, has been fixed in texts in Russian since the beginning of the 18th century, remaining rare until the second half of the 60s of the 19th century. By the beginning of the 20th century, it acquires about 20 meanings in a spectrum of connotations from the extremely sublime (“saving truth”) to the extremely profane (“opium for the people”) in the “atheistic” publications of the Soviet period, when the authorities begin to construct “communism” as a global perspective “universe of truth,” in which “atheism” must be established, and all religions must “die off.” Modern Russian religious studies “academically” describe the phenomenon of religion in a number of specialized research areas with its own distinctions of “true/false,” including understanding it as an “autopoiesis” of the beliefs of our fellow citizens and their communities as “actors” of communication processes that are part of the social subsystems of science, rights, media, etc. with its “atheistic/religious” distinctions. The publications of the 21st century discuss the variety of meanings of the Latin word “religio” and its derivatives, denoting both the infinitely complex and indescribable “extra-linguistic reality” of a person’s existence in the world, and local forms of “observing of the unknown,” reducing everything “unmastered” to the languages of the confessional “piety” and individual or group “vernacular religiosity,” which today can be understood “theologically,” “atheistically” or “academically.”
The paper looks at a combination of systems theory, cybernetics, and sociological theory in search of a tool for inquiring into contemporary social forms. The idea of observing networks, drawing on Heinz von Foerster’s and Niklas Luhmann’s notion of observing systems and Harrison C. White’s network calculus of identity and control, is outlined to enable basic sociological intuitions about social forms to be integrated with an understanding of both complexity and recursivity organizing our perspective on the human condition in a precarious world. Social forms are shown to gain robustness not from substantial identity but from relational ambiguity. Observing networks, or so the hypothesis goes, combine bodies, minds, society, and – soon perhaps – intelligent machines. The paper looks at how an understanding of complexity, recursivity, system, form, and network may help flesh out the calculus of our human condition.
This publication constructs a methodology of active learning for observing the observer: the tool used is the construction of games. The basic question is: What actions can be taken to allow the subject to observe himself, and how can learning activities be used as a way of reconstructing the subject’s experience during the observation? The basic reference framework for the qualitative research is constructivism. The conceptual and philosophical analysis of research is second-order cybernetics, which gives relevance to the theory of the observer and the relationship between the observer and what is observed. For the construction of the games the group is organized according to specific structures, which make up a work network within the proposed experimental scenario. Every reflexive discourse (conceptual, informational and descriptive) on the describer’s properties system will be formed, at least, of the perspectives, dispositions and distinctions in the language of the observer. In this sense, to observe the observer is not a representation of analyzable, controllable and predictable process, rather to observe the observer will be interpreting the metaphors that constitute him or her at any stage of experimentation that is proposed. The usefulness of the game as a methodology for observing the observer means that it is possible to propose a comparison between the dynamics of the social system built by the participants in the application of the methodology and the networks that can be built in terms of the language used. Relevance: The publication addresses a methodological approach for learning to observe the observer. In von Foerster’s words, observing the observer consists of describing the properties of the describer. First, we start from a position in second-order cybernetics which turns out to be a radical constructivist position. Then, we make a connection between observer, constructivism, metaphors and learning. The game is the designing pillar and the tool used to incorporate the proposed methodology. The games follow rules: constitutive, regulative and strategic. The structure of the game uses ideas of syntegration by Beer, and reinterprets them in a scenario of experimentation called the Cybernetics of Cybernetics course. In the game, each participant experiences the world which constitutes the game and the role of the observer in observing. Some final remarks discuss the use, advantages and limitations of the methodology proposed.
Beyes T. P. (2005) Observing observers: von Foerster, Luhmann, and management thinking. Kybernetes 34: 448–459. https://cepa.info/7686
Purpose: The paper discusses possible implications of Heinz von Foerster’s notion of second‐order cybernetics for management thinking. The purpose of this paper is to outline challenges of as well as prospective further developments for management theory that emanate from second‐order cybernetics. Design/methodology/approach – As a conceptual paper, the paper tries to develop its findings through theoretically applying von Foerster’s insights to management thinking’s conventional assumptions. When looking for applications of von Foerster’s approach within the social sciences, at least in german‐speaking countries one sooner or later comes across Niklas Luhmann’s system sociology. Hence, Luhmann’s version of the theory of the observer is introduced and its take on organization and management is briefly outlined. Drawing upon von Foerster’s and Luhmann’s reflections, possible implications for management thinking are presented – ideas that might be disagreeable for “classical” management science but might set out a path for further developments of management thinking. Findings: What difference might second‐order cybernetics (and autopoietic systems sociology) make for management thinking? As a conclusion, deliberately poignant statements are formulated, calling for a higher degree of self‐reflection, for critical readings of conventional texts, for more complex descriptions of organizations and for a more modest, low‐key take on management theory’s endeavours. Originality/value – Whereas first‐order cybernetics has been fairly well‐received in management theory, second‐order cybernetics, which poses troubling questions to conventional epistemologies, remained relatively unpopular. Acts of “observing observers” reclaim these questions, possibly leading to valuable insights for researchers and reflected practitioners alike.
This paper describes a method for presenting on a fluorescent screen the time varying velocity and density modulation of an electron beam, modulated at a frequency of 3000 Mc, as it emerges from the cavities of a klystron, the wave guide in a traveling wave tube, or similar structures. In order to deflect an electron beam at this frequency, each pair of the usual deflection plates is replaced by a two‐wire transmission line, resonant at the beam modulating frequency. Under proper phase conditions a circular trace is obtained, where one complete revolution of the beam corresponds to exactly one complete cycle of events on the beam at the point of its deflection. Since electrons having different velocities will be deflected differently, a complete velocity and density picture of the beam at a given point of interest is obtained. This is demonstrated by observing the bunching action in the drift region of a velocity modulated electron beam.
Bonawitz E., Gopnik A., Denison S. & Griffiths T. L. (2012) Rational randomness: The role of sampling in an algorithmic account of preschooler’s causal learning. In: Xu F. & Kushnir T. (eds.) Advances in child development and behavior. Volume 43. Academic Press, Waltham MA: 161–191.
Probabilistic models of cognitive development indicate the ideal solutions to computational problems that children face as they try to make sense of their environment. Under this approach, children’s beliefs change as the result of a single process: observing new data and drawing the appropriate conclusions from those data via Bayesian inference. However, such models typically leave open the question of what cognitive mechanisms might allow the finite minds of human children to perform the complex computations required by Bayesian inference. In this chapter, we highlight one potential mechanism: sampling from probability distributions. We introduce the idea of approximating Bayesian inference via Monte Carlo methods, outline the key ideas behind such methods, and review the evidence that human children have the cognitive prerequisites for using these methods. As a result, we identify a second factor that should be taken into account in explaining human cognitive development the nature of the mechanisms that are used in belief revision.
Brier S. (2009) Cybersemiotic Pragmaticism and Constructivism. Constructivist Foundations 5(1): 19-39. https://constructivist.info/5/1/019
Context: Radical constructivism claims that we have no final truth criteria for establishing one ontology over another. This leaves us with the question of how we can come to know anything in a viable manner. According to von Glasersfeld, radical constructivism is a theory of knowledge rather than a philosophy of the world in itself because we do not have access to a human-independent world. He considers knowledge as the ordering of experience to cope with situations in a satisfactory way. Problem: Von Foerster and Krippendorff show that the central goal of a constructivist theory of knowing must be to find a way of putting the knower into a known that is constructed so as to keep the knower, as well as the knowing process, viable in practice. Method: The conceptual and philosophical analysis of present theories and their necessary prerequisites suggests that such foundation for viable knowing can be built on the analysis of what the ontological prerequisites are for establishing viable observing, cognition, communication and observer-communicators, and communication media and vehicles. Results: The moment an observer chooses to accept his/her own embodied conscious presence in this world as well as language, he/she must accept other humans as partly independently existing conversation partners; if knowledge and knowing has to make sense, he/she must also accept as prerequisites for our observation and conversation a pre-linguistic reality from which our bodies come and which our conversation is often about. Furthermore, we can no longer claim that there is a reality that we do not know anything about: From being here in conversation, we know that the world can produce more or less stable embodied consciousnesses that can exchange and construct conceptual meanings through embodied conversations and actions that last over time and exist in space-time and mind, and are correlated to our embodied practices. We can also see that our communication works through signs for all living systems as well as in human language, understood as a structured and progressively developed system of communication. The prerequisite for this social semiotic production of meaning is the fourfold “semiotic star of cybersemiotics,” which includes at least four different worlds: our bodies, the combination of society, culture and language, our consciousness, and also an outer nature. Implications: The semiotic star in cybersemiotics claims that the internal subjective, the intersubjective linguistic, our living bodies, and nature are irreducible and equally necessary as epistemological prerequisites for knowing. The viable reality of any of them cannot be denied without self-refuting paradoxes. There is an obvious connectedness between the four worlds, which Peirce called “synechism.” It also points to Peirce’s conclusion that logic and rationality are part of the process of semiosis, and that meaning in the form of semiosis is a fundamental aspect of reality, not just a construction in our heads. Erratum: The paper erroneously refers to “pleroma.” The correct term is “plemora.”
This paper focusses on how researching is done through reflections about, or at a meta-level to, the practice over time of an enactivist mathematics education researcher. How are the key concepts of enactivist theory (ZDM Mathematics Education, doi: 10. 1007/s11858–014–0634–7, 2015) applied? This paper begins by giving an autobiographical account of the author’s engagement with enactivist ideas and the development of enactivist research projects. The rest of the paper then discusses principles of the design of enactivist followed by four themes of learning, observing, interviewing and find-ing(s). The spelling, find-ing(s), draws attention to the findings of enactivist research being processes not objects. In the case of the collaborative research group used as an exemplar throughout the paper, for instance, the find-ing(s) shed light onto the journeys of professional development travelled by the members of the group as they develop their teaching.