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The aim of this paper is to contribute to making higher education, particularly online education, more relevant and inspiring by orienting it toward the pragmatics and aesthetics of knowing. This paper also demonstrates the relevance of cybernetics and cybernetic thinking in education today.

The author's general strategy is to connect processes of knowing to the purpose of education, thus providing an organizing principle for the design and practice of online education. Nontrivial conversation and aesthetic experience are combined in a cybernetic complementarity, conceptualized as the processes that foster understanding. This serves the purpose of education, defined here as developing an understanding of how knowledge is constructed and fostering ways of knowing that are creative and complex.

Because the world has become increasingly complex, ambiguous, and pluralistic, the type of thinking needed to act and interact in the world must also be complex, e.g. creative, adaptive, relational, and empathetic. Research shows that this type of thinking is brought forth by aesthetic experience and nontrivial conversation. Combining these as processes of knowing provides a non-dogmatic way of orienting education toward student-centered constructivist learning.

Connecting nontrivial conversation and aesthetic experience as processes of knowing is an original contribution to education literature. This is also an exemplar of generating a cybernetic complementarity for conceptual modelling in education design. Anyone interested in how online education can extend efforts to transform higher education so it may better facilitate thinking in ways that are creative and complex will find this paper valuable.

To determine the influence of cybernetics and systemic thinking on psychotherapy from a personal viewpoint.

Describes the author's own development.

Shows the major influence that cybernetics and systemic thinking had on psychotherapy. Beginning with the concept of simple feedback he spins the thread of circular understanding to the contributions of Heinz von Foerster and others, finally arriving at shamanistic and indigenous rites, becoming ever more a topic in the research of communication and healing.

Provides a personal viewpoint of the contribution of the work of Heinz von Foerster.

To elaborate a systemic view of conducting psychotherapy with twins.

Using the form of a Batesonian metalogue the authors unpack and illustrate a number of key notions in the systemic psychotherapy of twins, including the ideas of the “exosomatic mind” which makes special reference to Bateson's definition of “mind” “cybernetic complementarity” and the “incarnated narrative”.

The discussions in the metalogue evidence a number of important systemic conversational features, underlining the fact that a therapist can conduct “systemic therapy” with a single individual.

Therapists are helped to see the need for going “beyond the individual skull” when doing therapy with a single person.

This paper connects the notions of abstract and actual based on a reflection of the Chinese notions of xiangsheng (mutual arising) and xushi (abstract/actual, empty/full). These word pairs enable a conception of abstract and actual that shows an alternative to, and which complements, distinctions of the terms that are based in dualism and rationalism.

The author sidesteps methodological rigour as practiced in the West as the style of thought introduced here shows a picture of abstract and actual arising from mutual interdependence rather than attempting to describe and formally distinguish abstract and actual through an observer‐independent methodology.

Discussing the relationship of actual and abstract from the viewpoint of the Chinese cultural tradition, this paper shows how abstract and actual may be thought of as a mutually generating, dynamic and polar relationship. The discussion further provides a basis for understanding how perceptions of abstract and actual can be understood as choices made by observers.

This research is based on the limited personal experience of the author as a teacher of architectural design at one Taiwanese and one Chinese university.

This paper reflects on the relationship of abstract and actual from a non‐dualist viewpoint by introducing traditional Chinese ways of seeing and appreciating, and connecting this perspective to cybernetic and radical constructivist epistemologies. To show the relationship between abstract and actual as polar and mutually arising, the paper focuses particularly on making and experiencing in and through creative processes.

Proposes two tentative projects for ordering the scientific concepts in relation to a systemic theory of knowledge, based on cognitive sciences. It tries to develop some basic ideas of Wiener in the framework of modern physics. The concept of complementarity is extended to ideologies. Cybernetics, it is assumed, could have an important role in the transformation of conflicts into synergetic trends.

The generality of the universe is “everything.” In this regard, the Qur'an declares abundantly on the ultimate and perfect domain of the divine law in creation. This also means the profundity of the divine law in explaining and applying to all things in the knowledge–time–space dimensions of the conscious universe. Such observations or insights that span the complete universe comprise the Signs of Allah (ayath Allah).¹

A brief critical review of the existing literature on the topic of integrity opens up the scope for a detailed approach to the meaning of social integrity, or integrity in its social relational sense. The tenor of explanation of this concept is then taken up as a subspace of the meaning of the supreme good and therein the concept of goodness. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

All such concepts are studied in the relational sense of epistemic origin of values. Such ethical values arise from the epistemic ontology of the moral law. They are contrasted with the contrary meanings under the episteme of rationalism.

Rationalism as philosophy of mind and matter devoid of a substantive acceptance of the divinely inspired functional ontology of the moral law is also critically and formally studied.

More empirical work needed and which indeed can be done both statistically as well as by quantitative mathematical models. The scope for this extension remains wide open in the paper.

The paper presents an immense import in the study of cognitive economics, behavioral finance, and decision making in the area of ethical finance and organizational behavior as a conscious institution. An example is provided. Many more areas are indicated. Altogether a vast scope of conception and applications in the area of endogenous ethics and socio-scientific field remains open.

The paper is truly original crossing the boundaries of social cybernetics and systems into mathematical algorithmic treatment exemplified by a game-theoretic example of the imminent place of the meanings of the good, goodness, and the trait of integrity in social behavior. All these are together embedded in the study of embedded social system and cybernetic study. This is a foundationally original field of research investigation playing out its analytical part in the study of social system and cybernetic.

Three levels of learning developed by Gregory Bateson in the tradition of second-order cybernetics have in-part been translated in terms of double-loop and triple-loop learning (TLL), particularly in the tradition of systems thinking. Learning III and TLL have gained less popularity since they deal with less tangible issues regarding virtues of wisdom and justice, respectively. The purpose of this paper is to provide a learning device – the systems thinking in practice (STiP) heuristic – which helps to retrieve the cybernetic concern for wisdom in association with an often forgotten systems concern for real-world power relations.

Using “conversation” as a metaphor the heuristic is introduced based on three orders of conversation. Drawing on ideas of systemic triangulation, another heuristic device – the systemic triangulator – is used to surface issues of power in the three orders of conversation. Some manifestations in using the STiP heuristic for supporting postgraduate systems learning are demonstrated.

Some key complementarities between conventionally opaque cybernetic issues of wisdom and systems issues of power are revealed, and used proactively to explore more effective coaching of STiP.

Cybernetics and systems thinking may benefit from being grounded more in understanding, engaging with, and transforming social realities. The heuristics provide practical experiential and meaningful learning through conversation, and more social premium for the study of cybernetics and systems thinking.

The heuristics – STiP, and the systemic triangulator – provides an innovative cyber-systemic space for learning and action.