Semiotics has itself thrived in a generative atmosphere of specialization and synthesis. Now, in an expanding intellectual universe, we converge with several other strains of scholarship. In this brief paper, we not only acknowledge this convergence and complementarity, but actively welcome the emerging rapprochement, which we interpret as representing a radical shift in scientific paradigm. This conceptual revolution transcends a dichotomous Cartesian, analytic view of the world, in the direction of a view embracing the whole, respecting complexity, and fostering synthesis.

Key words: natural selection, dissipative structure, human language, annual international conference, competitive unit.

The meaning of cybernetics of sociocultural systems is discussed in terms of two rival traditions. Both are reductionistic with respect to cognitive interaction: One seeks a reduction to (A) the Artificial Gestalt of symbolic representations; the other to (B) the Biological Gestalt of cellular reproduction. Cultural Gestalt-switches and other irreducible properties, such as intersubjectivity and capacity for consciousness, call for a third position in terms of (D) Dialogue and Dualities, which comprises and transcends the complementarity of (A) and (B). Conditions are indicated for shifts between modes conforming to both, and for the prevalence and resolution of model monopoly. Examples are given from small group studies and socioeconomic planning in Norway.

The ganglion cell density of the quail’s retina was studied in sections and whole mounts. Two regions of high ganglion cell density were found, corresponding to an afoveate area centralis and an area dorsalis. Oil droplets were found to be isotropically distributed throughout the retina. It is proposed that the significance of such retinal regional specialization, in comparison to similar studies in the pigeon and the chick, is that regional specialization in the avian retina is more closely related to feeding habits than to phylogenetic descendence.

One of the most popular tacks taken to explain cognitive processes likens them to the operations of a digital computer. Indeed, the tasks for the cognitive scientist and the artificial intelligence scientist are often seen as indistinguishable: to understand how a machine or a brain “can store past information about the world and use that memory to abstract meaning from its percepts” (Solso, 1979, p. 425). The fact that there are machines that appear to do this, to varying degrees of success, is often taken to imply, almost by default, that cognition would have to embody the same steps in order to achieve the same results. In what folIows, we outline our objections to this attitude and briefly consider some alternatives.

Key words: Jean Piaget, radical constructivism

This paper provides 1) a description of what has historically become the traditional model for perception theory and the theory of knowledge, 2) a characterization of the assumptions underlying that model, and 3) a comparison of that traditional model to each of two recent models. The two recent models are the “information‐based” model of perception by the psychologist James J. Gibson, and the autopoietic or “organizational closure” model of perception by the biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. A description of each model is presented, as are its underlying assumptions and conceptual viewpoint. The author’s intent, in an examination of the two recent models, is to show 1) that problems attendant to the traditional model, and to Gibson’s model as a variant of it, result from definitions within the ocular metaphor which describes that model; 2) that once the metaphor is discarded, both the theory of perception and the theory of knowledge can be differently circumscribed altogether; and 3) that the autopoietic model of Maturana and Varela has done just that.

In contradistinction to the classical problem of scientific inquiry that postulates first a description-invariant “objective world” (as if there were such a thing) and then attempts to write its description, here we are challenged to develop a description-invariant “subjective world,” that is a world which includes the observer. This is the problem. However, in accord with the classic tradition of scientific inquiry which perpetually asks “How?” rather than “What?,” this task calls for an epistemology of “How do we know?” rather than “What do we know?” The following notes on an epistemology of living things address themselves to the “How?” They may serve as a magnifying glass through which this problem becomes better visible.

Key words: science, representation, computation, experience, communication