Second Order Cybernetics as Cognitive Methodology
Published as
Scott, B. (1996). “Second-order cybernetics as cognitive methodology”, Systems Research 13, 3, pp. 393-406 (contribution to a Festschrift in honour of Heinz von Foerster).
Abstract
For some of us, the attraction of cybernetics is the very idea of it, the idea that the search for transdisciplinary truths is both possible and valuable. Many would accept that cybernetics has helped unify the first-order study of observed systems. In this paper, I explore ways in which second-order cybernetics may unify debates and discussions in the vast range of disciplines concerned with the observer, his experiences and his accounts of those experiences. The first part of the paper is deliberately first person and anecdotal, in the spirit of von Foerster’s dictum, “life is studied in vivo not in vitro”. The second part re-examines the classic cybernetic concepts of “self-organisation” and “circular causality” from the perspective of the constructivist epistemology of second order cybernetics and, by making the metaphorical status of the concepts explicit, shows how second order cybernetics may serve as a methodology for exploring modes of being. A major aim of the paper is to seek ways of navigating or building bridges between the praxes of rational science and the discourses of phenomenology and poetics.
Bernard Scott, April, 1996.
Introduction
“Systems thinking, when it does develop, emerges from a long period of personal experiences and interactions and from the self-testing of one’s own mental models”, De Greene, 1993, p.14, author’s italics.
“The imaginative transformation of human life is the means by which we can most truly grasp and comprehend it”, Heaney, 1995.
In 1979, I rather presumptuously wrote a paper expressing my appreciation of Heinz von Foerster as a "founding father" of cybernetics (Scott, 1979). On receiving a copy of the paper, Heinz kindly (and, I think, teasingly) responded with a telegram that read, "Ah! You have succeeded in reversing evolution: now the sons are inventing the fathers." I have continued to appreciate von Foerster and his work and am proud and happy to consider myself as one of his sons. In this paper, I sketch, in outline at least, a story about how and why I came to consider cybernetics to be important, placing Heinz von Foerster and his contributions close to the story's core. In telling, the story I shall refer to some events that I witnessed at first hand. I do this partly for the benefit of those who may be exploring cybernetic ideas for the first time and partly for the benefit of those who lived through the same times but who, inevitably, saw things from a different perspective. Chiefly, I wish to preface the more abstract discussion in the second part of the paper with strong reminders that coming to know is a personal affair and that, for the time being at least, I am in the world.
The main part of the paper is concerned with the epistemology of the observer, as clarified by von Foerster in two of his key papers (von Foerster, 1970, 1974) and discusses how cybernetics, itself, as an idea, can be understood as a key tool or cognitive methodology for the observer who would know himself and his world. Essentially, the argument is that epistemological considerations show us that the observer is free to entertain a variety of ontological commitments and, hence may explore modes of being. The example given is that of putting the concept of “mechanical causation” in question, so as to be open to novel conceptions - and experiences of - time consciousness. Parallels are drawn with traditions of discourse in phenomenology and in poetics. The aim, metaphorically, is that of building bridges or finding ways of navigating between the many islands of discourse that make up the vast archipelago of modes of experiencing - and descriptions of those modes - that are the human condition. In this , the aim is similar to that of Michel Serres (1982), in his explorations of relations between disciplines and discourses in the sciences and humanities. Indeed, it his metaphors about bridge building and navigation that I have borrowed and I am well aware that I am describing projects and journeys that are in progress. The novelty here is to place the idea of cybernetics and its goal of finding transdisciplinary unity in diversity at the heart of the enterprise.
In a short paper I can do little more than overview a form of argument and its consequences. I run the risk that, for those familiar with von Foerster’s work, what I say may seem trite and obvious and that, for those not so familiar, what I say may seem obscure. My hope is that others will value and enter into the cybernetic enterprise, and that, as humans continue to explore modes of being, the diversity that freedom brings is counterbalanced by continued attempts to communicate across disciplinary and cultural boundaries.
Encountering Cybernetics
I first encountered the idea of cybernetics in 1966 when, as an undergraduate student of psychology at Brunel University, I had the good fortune to attend a course of lectures given by David Stewart, a newly appointed lecturer in psychology. In 1968, he went on to join the newly founded Department of Cybernetics at Brunel, whose first two chair holders were Frank George and Gordon Pask. David’s lectures, covering such topics as information theory and automata theory, were firmly about cybernetics as conceived by Norbert Wiener and others who had participated in the series of conferences held under the auspices of the Josiah Macy Foundation between 1946 and 1952. Wiener’s original definition was that cybernetics is “the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine”. It is known that Wiener coined the name “cybernetics” during the lifetime of the conferences (Wiener, 1948), although their spirit and purpose is well-attested by the title that a majority of the conferences went under: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems (von Foerster et al (eds.) 1953). As can be adduced from his editorial duties, Heinz von Foerster was very much an influential and key participant.
I had previously read Grey Walter’s (1959) The Living Brain and W. Sluckin’s (1960) Men, Minds and Machines.. Both helped me appreciate the larger philosophical tradition in which problems of mind and body, freewill and determinism have been debated. I recall that Sluckin reported on developments in cybernetics and related disciplines but was not committed to cybernetics as a unifying, “transdiscipline”. David Stewart’s stimulating presentations helped me be aware of that possibility.
I was attracted to the thesis that cybernetics is a transdiscipline. It made sense that there should be unity in diversity. It made sense that there should be a discipline as important and as general as physics but one which was complementary to it. I grasped this as the aphorism “physics is about matter and energy; cybernetics is about control and communication”. Later, I came across the same distinction in the writings of Gregory Bateson (1972), using terms from Jung’s Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, with origins in gnostic, hermetic traditions. Pleroma refers to the “stuff” of the world as formless content. Creatura is the world of creatures, of distinctions made by observers.
Eventually, I read Ross Ashby’s (1956) Introduction to Cybernetics. I think all of us who love cybernetics have drawn inspiration from Ashby’s bold declaration that “The truths of cybernetics are not conditional on their being derived from some other branch of science. Cybernetics has its own foundations.” He goes on, “Cybernetics ……takes as its subject-matter the domain of “all possible machines””. This is followed on page 4 by “Cybernetics, might, in fact, be defined as the study of systems that are open to energy but closed to information and control - systems that are “information-tight””. Here Ashby is reflecting cybernetics’ primary concern with circular causality and anticipating later emphases on organisational closure.
Ashby highlights two primary uses of cybernetics: “One is that it offers a single vocabulary and a single set of concepts for representing the most diverse types of systems” and “The second peculiar virtue of cybernetics is that it offers a method for the scientific treatment of the system in which complexity is outstanding and too important to be ignored”. There are perhaps those who would disagree with Ashby's claim that cybernetics provides "a single vocabulary and a single set of concepts", pointing to the enormous proliferation of specialist vocabularies and conceptual schema within the cybernetics and "systems thinking" areas. However, I suggest that in this variety, there is enormous consensus and that there is an underlying structure of primary concepts and distinctions that makes cybernetics what it is, much of which is captured in Ashby's formal approach. I recently attended an international multidisciplinary conference, entitled Einstein meets Magritte and witnessed much difficulty, even distress, as physicists, philosophers, artists and humanists attempted to communicate with each other about a range of global issues. Within the larger conference there was a symposium on The Evolution of Complexity , convened by Francis Heylighen, with fifty or so participants including management scientists, biologists, systems scientist, psychologists, neuroscientists, sociologists, engineers, computer scientists and physicists. The remarkable thing about this symposium, in contrast to the main conference, was that there was much effective interdisciplinary communication. This was because all the participants did have some grounding in concepts to do with complex systems and cybernetics. Indeed, many of the participants drew directly on Ashby, himself. Thus is the master vindicated.
Further reading persuaded me not only of the value of cybernetic ideas as unifying but also that cyberneticians were not naive or trivial in their epistemologies, that there was a deep sense of self-awareness in the enterprise. I soon learned that there was in fact an informal collegiate, Bateson, McCulloch, Pask, Beer, to name some of them. There appeared to be a tacit understanding that, whatever their differences, they all had a reflexive sense of responsibility for their being in the world and were united in their commitment to a common good.
The concerns with the epistemology of the observer were made explicit in a coming together of ideas in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. I have alluded to some of these events in more detail elsewhere (Scott, 1996). What I have in mind are Spencer-Brown’s (1969) emphasis on the primacy of the act of distinction; Gordon Pask’s articulation of a cybernetic theory of conversations as self-organising systems, in which changes are quantised as “understandings” between participants (Pask, Scott and Kallikourdis, 1973, Pask, 1976); Gunther’s (1971) concept of life as polycontexturality, the intersection of observers’ perspectives, including perspectives of others’ perspectives; von Foerster’s (1974) distinction between a first-order cybernetics of observed systems and a second order cybernetics of observing systems; Maturana’s (1970) arguments for the closure of the cognitive domain based on an account of the organisational closure of living systems. Many seminal meetings took place in von Foerster’s Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) at the University of Illinois. In 1972, Oliver Wells, editor of the cybernetics newsletter Artorga, convened the world’s first conference on self-referential systems, in London. The participants were Gotthard Gunther, Gordon Pask, Humberto Maturana, Dionysius Kallikourdis and myself. Heinz von Foerster was unable to attend. I was fortunate to meet him, later that year, when he visited Pask’s laboratory (System Research Ltd., Richmond, Surrey), where I worked, and Brunel University, where I was a postgraduate student in cybernetics.
Quite soon there was the awareness of a new consensus being established. “Cybernetic idealism” is now dismissed as naive by many in our more cynical times. In the 1970’s, it gave rise to “new age” optimism. Francisco Varela was a leading spokesperson for the movement: “If everybody would agree that their current reality is a reality, and that what we essentially share is our capacity for constructing a reality, then perhaps we could agree on a meta-agreement for computing a reality that would mean survival and dignity for everybody on the planet...Thus self-reference is, for me, the nerve of this logic of paradise”, (Varela, 1976). I do not know if Varela still subscribes to this view of a possible utopia. Some of us do; some of us recognise it as an inevitability in the larger logic of survival and cosmic unfoldment. The form it will take is not known. Perhaps there will be “a new heaven and a new earth” as prophesied in Isaiah.
Pask’s contacts with the BCL meant we in his research group had early sight of BCL reports and papers, several of which also appeared in Artorga. It was from this source that I became aware of von Foerster’s influential writings on the epistemology of the observer. As well as being a profound thinker, von Foerster is a lucid and elegant communicator. Through a series of papers his ideas have been honed and summarised and presented with a disarming directness and simplicity, especially so, it seems, when he has risen to the challenge of sharing the insights of cybernetics with non-specialist audiences (see as examples, von Foerster, 1980, 1982a, 1993). In the next section, I summarise some of his key points.
Before doing so, I should perhaps make clear how I see the concerns and methods of cybernetics relate to concerns expressed in other disciplines. Second-order cybernetics aims to explain the observer to himself and to do so in a unifying, transdisciplinary way. As the “science of all possible machines”, it does so by building models, some of which may be concrete entities, as in robotics, some may be abstract logico-mathematical constructions, some may be less formal “marks on paper” (boxes, arrows). In general, the models are constructs or artefacts that are given an interpretation. The major achievement of second-order cybernetics has been that of showing how models of self-referential, self-producing systems may be constructed from more elementary relations, where a process of some sort gives rise to a product. Abstract models demonstrate logical possibilities and necessary relations. They may be interpreted as giving an account of how natural, biological systems “work” or as prescriptions for how to build concrete systems capable of certain behaviours.