Misplaced Pages

#281718

66-547: The robot was cybernetic . It did not use a computer. Its control circuitry consisted of dozens of transistors controlling analog voltages. It used photocell optics and sonar to navigate. The 2N404 transistors were used to create NOR logic gates that implemented the Boolean logic to tell it what to do when a specific sensor was activated. The 2N404 transistors were also used to create timing gates to tell it how long to do something. 2N1040 Power transistors were used to control

132-482: A Latin corruption gubernator . Finally, Wiener motivates the choice by steering engines of a ship being "one of the earliest and best-developed forms of feedback mechanisms". The initial focus of cybernetics was on parallels between regulatory feedback processes in biological and technological systems. Two foundational articles were published in 1943: "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow  – based on

198-413: A calculus for self-reference. Mathematicians and logicians working in second-order cybernetics include Gotthard Günther , Lars Löfgren , and Louis Kauffman . In political science in the 1980s unlike its predecessor, the new cybernetics concerns itself with the interaction of autonomous political actors and subgroups and the practical reflexive consciousness of the subject who produces and reproduces

264-482: A change in emphasis on the system being steered to the system doing the steering, and the factors which guide the steering decisions. And a new emphasis on communication between several systems which are trying to steer each other. Geyer & J. van der Zouwen (1992) recognize four themes in both sociocybernetics and new cybernetics: The reformulation of sociocybernetics as an "actor-oriented, observer-dependent, self-steering, time-variant" paradigm of human systems,

330-1351: A co-op student and one of the designers for Mod II. Cybernetics Collective intelligence Collective action Self-organized criticality Herd mentality Phase transition Agent-based modelling Synchronization Ant colony optimization Particle swarm optimization Swarm behaviour Social network analysis Small-world networks Centrality Motifs Graph theory Scaling Robustness Systems biology Dynamic networks Evolutionary computation Genetic algorithms Genetic programming Artificial life Machine learning Evolutionary developmental biology Artificial intelligence Evolutionary robotics Reaction–diffusion systems Partial differential equations Dissipative structures Percolation Cellular automata Spatial ecology Self-replication Conversation theory Entropy Feedback Goal-oriented Homeostasis Information theory Operationalization Second-order cybernetics Self-reference System dynamics Systems science Systems thinking Sensemaking Variety Ordinary differential equations Phase space Attractors Population dynamics Chaos Multistability Bifurcation Rational choice theory Bounded rationality Cybernetics

396-453: A collection edited by Heinz von Foerster. With Mead uncontactable due to field work at the time, Foerster titled the paper "Cybernetics of Cybernetics", a title that perhaps emphasised his concerns more than Mead's. Foerster promoted second-order cybernetics energetically, developing it as a means of renewal for cybernetics generally and as what has been called an "unfinished revolution" in science. Foerster developed second-order cybernetics as

462-560: A course option at the BCL examining various texts from cybernetics according to the principals they proposed; autopoiesis , developed by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela ; conversation theory , developed by Gordon Pask, Bernard Scott and Dionysius Kallikourdis; radical constructivism , developed by Ernst von Glasersfeld ; and other explorations of self-reference, including Foerster's eigen-forms and Glanville's theory of objects. A key concept in second-order cybernetics

528-624: A critique of morality in ethical terms, arguing for ethics to remain implicit in action. Foerster's position has been described as an "ethics of enabling ethics" or as a form of "recursive ethical questioning". Varela published a short book on "ethical know-how". Glanville identified a number of "desirable" ethical qualities implicit in the cybernetic devices of the black box, distinction, autonomy, and conversation . Others have drawn connections to design and critical systems heuristics. The relationship of first-order and second-order cybernetics can be compared to that between Isaac Newton 's view of

594-451: A critique of realism and objectivity and as a radically reflexive form of science, where observers enter their domains of observation, describing their own observing not the supposed causes. The initial development of second-order cybernetics was consolidated by the mid 1970s in a series of significant developments and publications. These included: the 1974 publication of the "Cybernetics of Cybernetics" book, edited by Foerster, developed as

660-419: A distinct emphasis on steering decisions; furthermore, it can be seen as constituting a reconceptualization of many concepts which are often routinely accepted without challenge. Others associated with or influenced by second-order cybernetics include: Other areas of application include: Journals with focuses on second-order cybernetics include: Andrew Pickering has criticised second-order cybernetics as

726-403: A number of directions. Early cybernetic work on artificial neural networks has been returned to as a paradigm in machine learning and artificial intelligence. The entanglements of society with emerging technologies has led to exchanges with feminist technoscience and posthumanism. Re-examinations of cybernetics' history have seen science studies scholars emphasising cybernetics' unusual qualities as

SECTION 10

#1732852601282

792-469: A number of other fields, leading to it having both wide influence and diverse interpretations. Cybernetics has been defined in a variety of ways, reflecting "the richness of its conceptual base." One of the best known definitions is that of the American scientist Norbert Wiener , who characterised cybernetics as concerned with "control and communication in the animal and the machine." Another early definition

858-426: A science, such as its "performative ontology". Practical design disciplines have drawn on cybernetics for theoretical underpinning and transdisciplinary connections. Emerging topics include how cybernetics' engagements with social, human, and ecological contexts might come together with its earlier technological focus, whether as a critical discourse or a "new branch of engineering". The central theme in cybernetics

924-429: A ship (the ancient Greek κυβερνήτης ( kybernḗtēs ) means "helmsperson"). In steering a ship, the helmsperson adjusts their steering in continual response to the effect it is observed as having, forming a feedback loop through which a steady course can be maintained in a changing environment, responding to disturbances from cross winds and tide. Cybernetics' transdisciplinary character has meant that it intersects with

990-617: A special, restricted version of second-order cybernetics. The distinction between first and second-order cybernetics is sometimes used as a form of periodisation, while can obscure the continuity between earlier and later cybernetics, with what would come to be called second-order qualities evident in the work of cyberneticians such as Warren McCulloch and Gregory Bateson, and with Foerster and Mead being both Macy conference participants and instigators of second-order cybernetics. Mead and Bateson, for instance, noted that they and Wiener understood themselves as participant observers in contrast to

1056-504: Is feedback . Feedback is a process where the observed outcomes of actions are taken as inputs for further action in ways that support the pursuit, maintenance, or disruption of particular conditions, forming a circular causal relationship. In steering a ship, the helmsperson maintains a steady course in a changing environment by adjusting their steering in continual response to the effect it is observed as having. Other examples of circular causal feedback include: technological devices such as

1122-686: Is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. Contributions in education, include: The ideas of second-order cybernetics have been influential in systemic and constructivist approaches to family therapy , with Bateson's work at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto being a key influence. Family therapists influenced by aspects of second-order cybernetics include Lynn Hoffman , Bradford Keeney and Paul Watzlawick . Organizational cybernetics

1188-418: Is concerned with other forms of circular processes including: feedforward , recursion , and reflexivity . Other key concepts and theories in cybernetics include: Cybernetics' central concept of circular causality is of wide applicability, leading to diverse applications and relations with other fields. Many of the initial applications of cybernetics focused on engineering , biology , and exchanges between

1254-425: Is distinguished from management cybernetics . Both use many of the same terms but interpret them according to another philosophy of systems thinking . Organizational cybernetics by contrast offers a significant break with the assumption of the hard approach. The full flowering of organizational cybernetics is represented by Beer's viable system model . Organizational cybernetics studies organizational design , and

1320-500: Is much continuity with previous work and it can be thought of as a distinct tradition within cybernetics, with origins in issues evident during the Macy conferences in which cybernetics was initially developed. Its concerns include autonomy , epistemology, ethics, language, reflexivity , self-consistency, self-referentiality , and self-organizing capabilities of complex systems . It has been characterised as cybernetics where "circularity

1386-418: Is taken seriously". Second-order cybernetics can be abbreviated as C2, C , or SOC , and is sometimes referred to as the cybernetics of cybernetics , or, more rarely, the new cybernetics , or second cybernetics . These terms are often used interchangeably, but can also stress different aspects: Second-order cybernetics took shape during the late 1960s and mid 1970s. The 1967 keynote address to

SECTION 20

#1732852601282

1452-583: Is that observers (and other actors, such as designers, modellers, users...) are to be understood as participants within the systems with which they are engaged, in contrast to the detachment implied in objectivity and conventional scientific practice. This includes cyberneticians inclusion of themselves in the practice of cybernetics, as well as the inclusion of participants within the consideration and design of systems more generally. Second-order cybernetics' emphasis on participation and inclusion has led to affinities and overlaps with action research , design, and

1518-456: Is that of the Macy cybernetics conferences , where cybernetics was understood as the study of "circular causal and feedback mechanisms in biological and social systems." Margaret Mead emphasised the role of cybernetics as "a form of cross-disciplinary thought which made it possible for members of many disciplines to communicate with each other easily in a language which all could understand." Other definitions include: "the art of governing or

1584-444: Is the transdisciplinary study of circular processes such as feedback systems where outputs are also inputs. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts, including in ecological, technological, biological , cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as designing, learning, and managing . The field is named after an example of circular causal feedback—that of steering

1650-532: The cybernetics of cybernetics , is the recursive application of cybernetics to itself and the reflexive practice of cybernetics according to such a critique. It is cybernetics where "the role of the observer is appreciated and acknowledged rather than disguised, as had become traditional in western science". Second-order cybernetics was developed between the late 1960s and mid 1970s by Heinz von Foerster and others, with key inspiration coming from Margaret Mead . Foerster referred to it as "the control of control and

1716-575: The thermostat , where the action of a heater responds to measured changes in temperature regulating the temperature of the room within a set range, and the centrifugal governor of a steam engine, which regulates the engine speed; biological examples such as the coordination of volitional movement through the nervous system and the homeostatic processes that regulate variables such as blood sugar; and processes of social interaction such as conversation. Negative feedback processes are those that maintain particular conditions by reducing (hence 'negative')

1782-529: The 1950s, cybernetics was developed as a primarily technical discipline, such as in Qian Xuesen 's 1954 "Engineering Cybernetics". In the Soviet Union , Cybernetics was initially considered with suspicion but became accepted from the mid to late 1950s. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, cybernetics' transdisciplinarity fragmented, with technical focuses separating into separate fields. Artificial intelligence (AI)

1848-449: The 1960s onwards, with its focus inflecting away from technology toward social, ecological, and philosophical concerns. It was still grounded in biology, notably Maturana and Varela 's autopoiesis , and built on earlier work on self-organising systems and the presence of anthropologists Mead and Bateson in the Macy meetings. The Biological Computer Laboratory, founded in 1958 and active until

1914-514: The Animal and the Machine . In the book, Wiener states: After much consideration, we have come to the conclusion that all the existing terminology has too heavy a bias to one side or another to serve the future development of the field as well as it should; and as happens so often to scientists, we have been forced to coin at least one artificial neo-Greek expression to fill the gap. We have decided to call

1980-512: The UK, similar focuses were explored by the Ratio Club , an informal dining club of young psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers that met between 1949 and 1958. Wiener introduced the neologism cybernetics to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms" and popularized it through the book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine . During

2046-428: The basis of future communications. Decisions as elements of organizations are communications that communicate a selection as a selection which allows for the furthering of organizational purpose as social systems that produce new communications out of existing and previous communications. Second-order cybernetics was influenced by George Spencer Brown's Laws of Form , which was later developed by Francisco Varela into

Johns Hopkins Beast - Misplaced Pages Continue

2112-440: The communication of communication" and differentiated first-order cybernetics as "the cybernetics of observed systems" and second-order cybernetics as "the cybernetics of observing systems". The concept of second-order cybernetics is closely allied to radical constructivism , which was developed around the same time by Ernst von Glasersfeld . While it is sometimes considered a break from the earlier concerns of cybernetics, there

2178-611: The creative arts whose work is associated with second-order cybernetics include Roy Ascott , Herbert Brün , and Tom Scholte . Second-order cybernetics has contributed to design in areas including design computation, design methods, interactive architecture , systemic design , and the relationship between design and research. Designers and design theorists influenced by cybernetics include Horst Rittel , Christopher Alexander , Cedric Price , Bruce Archer , Ranulph Glanville , Klaus Krippendorff , Paul Pangaro , Annetta Pedretti , Lebbeus Woods and Neil Spiller . Enactivism

2244-544: The creative arts, while also developing exchanges with constructivist philosophies, counter-cultural movements, and media studies. The development of management cybernetics has led to a variety of applications, notably to the national economy of Chile under the Allende government in Project Cybersyn . In design, cybernetics has been influential on interactive architecture , human-computer interaction, design research, and

2310-468: The creative arts, design, and architecture, notably with the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition (ICA, London, 1968), curated by Jasia Reichardt , and the unrealised Fun Palace project (London, unrealised, 1964 onwards), where Gordon Pask was consultant to architect Cedric Price and theatre director Joan Littlewood. From the 1990s onwards, there has been a renewed interest in cybernetics from

2376-407: The creative arts. While second-order cybernetics continues to use of the terms observing and observers following Foerster's formulation, Ranulph Glanville has suggested using the terms composition and composers instead to better indicate the active role of participation. The critique of objectivity developed in second-order cybernetics has led to a concern with ethical issues. Foerster developed

2442-415: The cybernetic metaphors of the program upon which molecular biology had been based rendered a conception of the autonomy of the living being impossible. Consequently, these thinkers were led to invent a new cybernetics, one more suited to the organization mankind discovers in nature." The notion of eigenform is an example of a self-referential system that produces a stable form. It plays an important role in

2508-453: The detached "input-output" approach typical of engineering. In this sense, second-order cybernetics can be thought of as a distinct tradition within cybernetics that developed along different lines to the narrower framing of engineering cybernetics . Pask summarized the differences between the old and the new cybernetics as a shift in emphasis: from information to coupling, from the reproduction of "order-from-order" ( Schroedinger 1944) to

2574-546: The development of systemic design and metadesign practices. Cybernetics is often understood within the context of systems science, systems theory , and systems thinking . Systems approaches influenced by cybernetics include critical systems thinking , which incorporates the viable system model ; systemic design ; and system dynamics , which is based on the concept of causal feedback loops. Many fields trace their origins in whole or part to work carried out in cybernetics, or were partially absorbed into cybernetics when it

2640-448: The development of cybernetic systems. Mead's paper concluded with a proposal directed at the ASC itself, that it organise itself in the light of the ideas with which it was concerned. That is, the practice of cybernetics by the ASC should be subject to cybernetic critique, an idea returned to by Ranulph Glanville in his time as president of the society. Mead's paper was published in 1968 in

2706-486: The development of radical constructivism. Cybernetics' core theme of circular causality was developed beyond goal-oriented processes to concerns with reflexivity and recursion. This was especially so in the development of second-order cybernetics (or the cybernetics of cybernetics), developed and promoted by Heinz von Foerster, which focused on questions of observation, cognition, epistemology, and ethics. The 1960s onwards also saw cybernetics begin to develop exchanges with

Johns Hopkins Beast - Misplaced Pages Continue

2772-443: The difference from a desired state, such as where a thermostat turns on a heater when it is too cold and turns a heater off when it is too hot. Positive feedback processes increase (hence 'positive') the difference from a desired state. An example of positive feedback is when a microphone picks up the sound that it is producing through a speaker, which is then played through the speaker, and so on. In addition to feedback, cybernetics

2838-461: The entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name Cybernetics , which we form from the Greek κυβερνήτης or steersman . Moreover, Wiener explains, the term was chosen to recognize James Clerk Maxwell 's 1868 publication on feedback mechanisms involving governors , noting that the term governor is also derived from κυβερνήτης ( kubernḗtēs ) via

2904-487: The environment. This provides a new epistemological foundation of science, by viewing it as observer-dependent. Another characteristic of the new cybernetics is its contribution toward bridging the "micro-macro gap". That is, it links the individual with the society. Geyer and van der Zouten also noted that a transition from classical cybernetics to new cybernetics involves a transition from classical problems to new problems. These shifts in thinking involve, among other things,

2970-408: The generation of "order-from-noise" ( von Foerster 1960), from transmission of data to conversation, and from external observation to participant observation. Some see the definition of third and higher orders of cybernetics as a next step in the development of the discipline, but this has not won widespread acceptance. Attempts to define a third order of cybernetics have been concerned with embedding

3036-522: The inaugural meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) by Margaret Mead, who had been a participant at the Macy Conferences, is a defining moment in its development. Mead characterised "cybernetics as a way of looking at things and as a language for expressing what one sees", calling on cyberneticians to assume responsibility for the social consequences of the language of cybernetics and

3102-525: The metaphor of a steersman is used to signify the governance of people. The French word cybernétique was also used in 1834 by the physicist André-Marie Ampère to denote the sciences of government in his classification system of human knowledge. According to Norbert Wiener, the word cybernetics was coined by a research group involving himself and Arturo Rosenblueth in the summer of 1947. It has been attested in print since at least 1948 through Wiener's book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in

3168-509: The mid-1970s under the direction of Heinz von Foerster at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign , was a major incubator of this trend in cybernetics research. Focuses of the second wave of cybernetics included management cybernetics, such as Stafford Beer's biologically inspired viable system model ; work in family therapy, drawing on Bateson; social systems, such as in the work of Niklas Luhmann ; epistemology and pedagogy, such as in

3234-432: The new cybernetics: as a result of its application to social science problems, cybernetics, itself, has been changed and has moved from its originally rather mechanistic point of departure to become more actor-oriented and observer-dependent. In summary, the new sociocybernetics is much more subjective and uses a sociological approach more than classical cybernetics approach with its emphasis on control. The new approach has

3300-401: The obstruction. It could also ultrasonically recognize the stairway and doorways to take appropriate action. An optical guidance system was added to Mod II. This provided, among other capabilities, the ability to optically identify the black wall sockets that contrasted with the white wall. The Hopkins Beast Autonomous Robot Mod II link below was written by Dr. Ronald McConnell, at that time

3366-400: The participant observer of second-order cybernetics explicitly within broader social and/or ecological contexts. Foerster discouraged the definition of higher orders, regarding the distinction between first-and second as an either/or regarding the position of the cyberneticians with regard to their system of concern. Second-order cybernetics is closely identified with Heinz von Foerster and

SECTION 50

#1732852601282

3432-558: The power to the motion treads, the boom, and the charging mechanism. The original sensors in Mod I were physical touch only. The wall socket was detected by physical switches on the arm that followed the wall. Once detected, two electrical prongs were extended until they entered the wall socket and made the electrical connection to charge the vehicle. The stairway, doors, and pipes on the hall wall were also detected by physical switches and recognized by appropriate logic. The sonar guidance system

3498-585: The private, semi-private and public sectors; the latter sector is emphasised). The connection between second-order cybernetics and management cybernetics can be found through organizational theory . As meaning processing systems, social systems are relational in nature, as their elements are made up of the communications that form the basis of these social relations. Organizations are a particular type of social systems that self-produce by communicating decisions. The self-production consists of communications that select selections which further reinforces and forms

3564-405: The regulation and self-regulation of organizations from a systems theory perspective that also takes the social dimension into consideration. Researchers in economics, public administration and political science focus on the changes in institutions, organisation and mechanisms of social steering at various levels (sub-national, national, European, international) and in different sectors (including

3630-781: The research on living organisms that Rosenblueth did in Mexico ;– and the paper "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts . The foundations of cybernetics were then developed through a series of transdisciplinary conferences funded by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, between 1946 and 1953. The conferences were chaired by McCulloch and had participants included Ross Ashby , Gregory Bateson , Heinz von Foerster , Margaret Mead , John von Neumann , and Norbert Wiener . In

3696-600: The science of government" ( André-Marie Ampère ); "the art of steersmanship" ( Ross Ashby ); "the study of systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing, and processing information so as to use it for control" ( Andrey Kolmogorov ); and "a branch of mathematics dealing with problems of control, recursiveness, and information, focuses on forms and the patterns that connect" ( Gregory Bateson ). The Ancient Greek term κυβερνητικός (kubernētikos, '(good at) steering') appears in Plato 's Republic and Alcibiades , where

3762-470: The structure of political community. A dominant consideration is that of recursiveness, or self-reference of political action both with regard to the expression of political consciousness and with the ways in which systems build upon themselves. In 1978, Geyer and van der Zouwen discuss a number of characteristics of the emerging "new cybernetics". One characteristic of new cybernetics is that it views information as constructed by an individual interacting with

3828-401: The two, such as medical cybernetics and robotics and topics such as neural networks , heterarchy . In the social and behavioral sciences, cybernetics has included and influenced work in anthropology , sociology , economics , family therapy , cognitive science, and psychology . As cybernetics has developed, it broadened in scope to include work in management, design, pedagogy, and

3894-453: The universe and that of Albert Einstein . Just as Newton's description remains appropriate and usable in many circumstances, even flights to the moon, so first-order cybernetics also provides everything that is needed in many circumstances. In the same way that the Newtonian view is understood to be a special, restricted version of Einstein's view, so first-order cybernetics may be understood as

3960-471: The work of Heinz von Foerster and is "inextricably linked with second order cybernetics". Radical constructivism is an approach to epistemology developed initially by Ernst von Glasersfeld . It is closely associated with second-order cybernetics, especially with the work of Heinz von Foerster and Humberto Maturana. Second-order cybernetics has been a point of reference in the creative arts, including in theatre studies and music theory. Practitioners in

4026-574: The work of the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Foerster attributes the origin of second-order cybernetics to the attempts by cyberneticians to construct a model of the mind: ... a brain is required to write a theory of a brain. From this follows that a theory of the brain, that has any aspirations for completeness, has to account for the writing of this theory. And even more fascinating,

SECTION 60

#1732852601282

4092-447: The writer of this theory has to account for her or himself. Translated into the domain of cybernetics; the cybernetician, by entering his own domain, has to account for his or her own activity. Cybernetics then becomes cybernetics of cybernetics, or second-order cybernetics . Theoretical developments closely associated with the development of second-order cybernetics include: Biologists such as Maturana, Varela, and Atlan "realized that

4158-452: Was developed for Mod I and improved for Mod II. It used two ultrasonic transducers to determine distance, location within the halls, and obstructions in its path. This provided "The Beast" with bat -like guidance. At this point, it could detect obstructions in the hallway, such as people. Once an obstruction was detected, the Beast would slow down and then decide whether to stop or divert around

4224-530: Was developed. These include artificial intelligence , bionics , cognitive science , control theory , complexity science , computer science , information theory and robotics . Some aspects of modern artificial intelligence , particularly the social machine , are often described in cybernetic terms. Academic journals with focuses in cybernetics include: Academic societies primarily concerned with cybernetics or aspects of it include: Second-order cybernetics Second-order cybernetics , also known as

4290-517: Was founded as a distinct discipline at the Dartmouth workshop in 1956, differentiating itself from the broader cybernetics field. After some uneasy coexistence, AI gained funding and prominence. Consequently, cybernetic sciences such as the study of artificial neural networks were downplayed. Similarly, computer science became defined as a distinct academic discipline in the 1950s and early 1960s. The second wave of cybernetics came to prominence from

4356-507: Was most clearly articulated by Geyer and van der Zouwen in 1978 and 1986. They stated that sociocybernetics is more than just social cybernetics, which could be defined as the application of the general systems approach to social science. Social cybernetics is indeed more than such a one-way knowledge transfer. It implies a feed-back loop from the area of application – the social sciences – to the theory being applied, namely cybernetics; consequently, sociocybernetics can indeed be viewed as part of

#281718