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.

Excerpt: The medium, substances, surfaces, objects, places, and other animals have affordances for a given animal. They offer benefit or injury, life or death. This is why they need to be perceived. The possibilities of the environment and the way of life of the animal go together inseparably. The environment constrains what the animal can do, and the concept of a niche in ecology reflects this fact. Within limits, the human animal can alter the affordances of the environment but is still the creature of his or her situation. There is information in stimulation for the physical properties of things, and presumably there is information for the environmental properties. The doctrine that says we must distinguish among the variables of things before we can learn their meanings is questionable. Affordances are properties taken with reference to the observer. They are neither physical nor phenomenal. The hypothesis of information in ambient light to specify affordances is the culmination of ecological optics. The notion of invariants that are related at one extreme to the motives and needs of an observer and at the other extreme to the substances and surfaces of a world provides a new approach to psychology.

I shall adopt a cybernetic attitude and develop some ideas on how a child forms certain basic concepts, among them the concept of self. Drawing on Jean Piaget’s analysis of cognitive development during the sensorimotor period, I shall try to show, on the one hand, that his theory is quite compatible with the cybernetic way of thinking and, on the other hand, that the cybernetic way of thinking may help to illuminate some of the darker corners of the theory.

Key words: cybernetics, experience, Jean Piaget, radical constructivism

Excerpt: After a short exposition of the traditional view of cognition and the concept of interaction between organism and environment, the epistemological ideas that have recently been developed in the field of cybernetics are outlined. The emerging radical constructivist model is then applied to the Piagetian concept of knowledge and it is suggested that this interpretation, though rarely explicitly stated, is implicit in Piaget’s genetic epistemology and is, indeed, necessary in order to make it an internally consistent theory of knowledge.

Key words: radical constructivism, cognition, Jean Piaget

Key words: radical constructivism, history

This paper presents a framework within which a number of preferred system descriptions can be unified. Of particular interest are the differences stemming from the study of natural systems (biological and social) and man-made systems (engineering and computer). It is claimed that the insights from She study of natural systems have been developed less extensively and precisely. One important case discussed here is the relationship between describing a system as autonomous or as controlled. A precise characterization of complementarity in descriptions is proposed through the notion of adjoint functor, to explicate the interplay of these dual views. Other descriptive dualities of similar kind are discussed, the complementarity between nets and trees is presented in full detail.