Search results

This paper aims to offer an integration of Vladimir Lepskiy’s third-order cybernetics and Raul Espejo’s Viplan methodology. Key ideas are mechanisms for social responsibility and a methodology to improve them through self-developing reflexive-active environments.

The authors propose a methodology based on modern philosophy of science, which sets the foundation of ontological cybernetics, constructed by subjects with different epistemological stances. This methodology includes considerations for social values, worldview principles, multiple viewpoints and subject-oriented information and communication platforms.

Current negative trends in socio-economic and environmental developments are associated with weaker social responsibilities of those holding power in society. To increase their social responsibility, the authors argue it is necessary for them to have more effective governance and development mechanisms. The proposed methodology ensures more effective interactions of stakeholders toward creating, regulating and implementing societal problem-solving.

This paper offers an initial theoretical conceptualization and illustration of social responsibility, which would benefit from further conceptual developments and practical applications.

The methodology helps increasing the level of social responsibility of all participants in control and development processes in social systems. The proposed approach allows ensuring the inclusion of stakeholders in societal problem solving through participatory methods and democratic approaches.

The conceptual and methodological ideas of this paper are based on the authors’ original research. The methodology and model of ontological cybernetics proposed in this paper are based on organizational cybernetics and modern views of philosophy of science. The methodology and model include basic ontological values and principles.

The purpose of this paper is to sketch the most valuable contribution of Dr Rose to the development of social cybernetics over the period 1975‐1995.

The paper is based on an analysis of the proceedings of the sections on “Social Systems” or “Social Cybernetics” of the WOSC conferences from 1978 through 1991, and on an analysis of the entries of the Bibliography on Social Cybernetics (1998).

The sections on “Social Systems” of the International Congresses on Systems and Cybernetics, initiated by Dr Rose, provided in the period 1978‐1995 the most important meeting point for social scientists aiming at the application of the cybernetic approach to social systems and social processes, and for cyberneticians wanting to use the principles of cybernetics for the analysis and solution of social problems.

The paper shows how the journal Kybernetes, founded by Dr Rose, became the most frequently used publication medium of social cyberneticians: of the 184 papers on social cybernetics mentioned in this bibliography 76 (41 per cent) were published in Kybernetes, more than in any other journal in the domain of cybernetics or social science.

In studying the relationship between Cybernetics and Social Science, theories and research in Sociocyber‐netics are examined. The focus is on researchers who apply Cybernetics to the study of society and its social systems and processes. References are backed by a new 300‐item bibliography of the relevant system literature, compiled for the article.

This chapter explores the ways in which cybernetics influenced the works of F. A. Hayek from the late 1940s onward. It shows that the concept of negative feedback, borrowed from cybernetics, was central to Hayek’s attempt to explain the principle of the emergence of human purposive behavior. Next, the chapter discusses Hayek’s later uses of cybernetic ideas in his works on the spontaneous formation of social orders. Finally, Hayek’s view on the appropriate scope of the use of cybernetics is considered.

Aims to analyse the influence of Norbert Wiener’s ideas on the social sciences and on social systems, including society as a whole. Describes Wiener’s own attitudes regarding the applicability of cybernetics to social systems and his vision on the development of modern society. Highlights sociologists and political scientists who were inspired by his ideas and deals with researchers who tried to apply his ideas to social systems. Concludes by evaluating to what extent specific ideas of Wiener have impacted on the social sciences.

This paper seeks to argue that sociology is in need of reconstruction on a theoretical and conceptual foundation of cybernetics, specifically, managerial cybernetics and to show how this hitherto unsuccessful task might be brought about.

The approach is one of a rigorous and deep querying of the reasons for the lack of successful fit heretofore between sociology and cybernetics. By taking a critical, historical and philosophical approach to the development of sciences it opens possibilities for the reconstruction of sociology as a “new science” based on the foundation of cybernetics, specifically the managerial cybernetics of Stafford Beer.

The work argues that the appropriate conceptual foundation for the social sciences is the realm of communication and control, ideas that were given a rigorous formulation in cybernetics, information theory and systems thinking since the 1940s. Many people have seen the prima facie appropriateness of these ideas for the study of human society and numerous attempts have been made to apply them. Almost, all of these efforts have been failures, at least from a sociological point of view. The paper suggests that the problem with all such previous attempts is that they consisted of too direct an application of cybernetics to sociology, entailing a metaphoric reduction that threatened the intellectual integrity of the discipline. Work in the history of sciences suggests that, whereas deep theoretical, foundational work may well be achieved for a realm in the abstract, so to speak, it is when attempts are made to apply these results to more phenomenal domains, to which in principle they are deemed appropriate and relevant, that problems of an apparent “lack of fit” arise. It has been found that a group of intermediating concepts is necessary to draw the two domains together in a workable fit. This process has been called “finalization of science”.

Of immediate value is the reconstruction of sociology as a cybernetically informed science of society that actually delivers theoretical, analytical, research and practical results.

The paper represents a highly original synthesis drawn from the history and philosophy of science development to yield immediate and useful results.

To report on an empirical study in psycholinguistics that revealed a difference between European and American patterns of thinking and to provide a brief history of a 30‐year effort to modify the philosophy of science in order to make it more suitable as a guide to doing research in the social sciences.

Assesses the approach of Heinz von Foerster, who used a deductive approach to science rather than an American empirical approach. Furthermore, von Foerster was willing to modify not only science but also the philosophy of science. By proposing that scientists pay attention to the observer as well as the observed, he added a dimension to the philosophy of science, which affects all disciplines.

Proposes an additional dimension that might be added to the philosophy of science. Paying attention to both the observer and the receiving society suggests a communication metaphor rather than the photograph metaphor, which has prevailed in the philosophy of science. Examining the philosophical underpinnings of science rather than just testing or extending an existing theory is a type of inquiry that springs from von Foerster's enthusiasm for tackling interesting problems unimpeded by disciplinary boundaries.

An assessment of the contribution to the multidisciplinary approach to science of von Foerster.

The paper studies the participation of Gregory Bateson at the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics, that would prove to be a real turning point in his intellectual itinerary.

It bases itself on more or less known documents and on the newer studies on early cybernetics, focussing in particular on the earliest Macy meetings.

Being still an anthropologist, Bateson insisted on the importance and lack of theory in social sciences. Arriving at the first Macy meeting, he hoped that the new researches conducted by Norbert Wiener with others would have helped him to clarify the concept of circular causality that he believed to be a very central theoretical notion in social sciences. Indeed, Wiener was strongly sceptical about the inclusion of social sciences in the new cybernetic programs. Nevertheless, Bateson could learn about negative and positive feedback, about how negative feedback was able to explain finality in a non‐metaphysical way, and discovered the specificity of phenomena concerning information. In addition, he became acquainted with Russell's theory of logical types, which resonated in his mind with his ideas about deutero‐learning. Very quickly, his reasoning about circular processes in society began to include also problems of communication and self‐referentiality.

It wants to explain one of the most important moments in Bateson's scientific evolution, emphasizing theoretical problems in social sciences demanding still now a stable clarification.

The nature of narrative is important, and with the development of awareness of knowledge processes, it becoming more important. In particular its notions can be enhanced by examining it in terms of antenarrative. Ultimately the paper aims to explore the relationship between narrative and antenarrative.

The objectives of the paper are achieved by seating the notions of narrative and antenarrative into the models of knowledge cybernetics (in particular social viable systems – SVS and social cybernetics) to enable an exploration of the consequences of their interaction. If narrative and antenarrative are seen as together forming an autonomous system, then their relationship may be explored in terms of SVS. This is effectively a social geometry that enables complex conceptual relationships to be explored graphically.

While normally one might think that narrative and antenarrative are incommensurable, the theory explains how through enantiomer dynamics, patterns of narrative can be related to un‐patterned arbitrary antenarratives. Under the right circumstances narrative and antenarrative can form a joint alliance that enables the two forms to merge into a story. This means that a story is told in a way that enables narrative structures to be intermingled with antenarrative thereby forming a thematic story event that has potential to engage more dynamically with the listener.

The paper is fundamentally theoretical, and a useful development would be to apply this to real case scenarios, thereby exploring quantitively the interconnection between narrative and antenarrative, and some of its implications.

It must be realised that there is a tacit knowledge dimension that connects the narrative/antenarrative situation with a story acquirer. The ability of the acquirer to recognise whether a situation has narrative or antenarrative is a function of that acquirer's own pattern of knowledge, and this embodies subjectivity. This is bound up within the notion of third cybernetics. The interconnectedness of narrative and antenarrative is relevant to actual processes of social communication, and demonstrates a parallel coexistence of modernist and postmodernist paradigms.

The paper applies a new theory, that of knowledge cybernetics, to a difficult conceptual area of study. While this results in the need to understand the conceptual basis of knowledge cybernetics, it does provide a frame of reference that enables relatively simple approaches in knowledge and knowledge processes to be graphically represented, thereby providing the potential for new insights. The value of the paper is that these graphical techniques are illustrated, and they would likely be useful to those who work in the knowledge or knowledge management field.

To provide an overview of the historical development of non‐reductive currents in science that underpinned the sociocybernetic movement and from that perspective assess the importance of the movement for social science.

Examines the principles of general system theory, cybernetics, and sociocybernetics, in a relevant selection of the founding literatures as an outgrowth of the long‐term development of the structures of knowledge in the modern world and as related to contemporary geopolitics and the world‐economy.

Indicates how sociocybernetics, as a holistic alternative, may be a part of the solution to the crisis of analytic approaches in applications targeting an understanding and interpretation of human reality.

Suggests how scholars may confront today's world as active agents without losing their status as producers of authoritative knowledge.