Embracing Realists Without Embracing Realism: The Future of Second-Order Cybernetics (original) (raw)
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With the marginalization of cybernetics, efforts to develop a universal epistemological method ceased as well. But the question remains open as to whether cybernetics contributed to the reconceptualization of the model and the popularity of scientific modeling since the mid-twentieth century. The present study approaches this question using the example of the general model theory of the German cyberneticist Herbert Stachowiak. Although this theory failed to produce a unifying and common model concept, its characteristics point toward a change in epistemological positions that is important for today's scientific practice and also anticipated recent developments in the philosophy of science.
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The main purpose of this special issue is to show some intersections and/or relationships between the fields of Philosophy and Cybernetics (including Second Order Cybernetics). Philosophy and Cybernetics are, implicitly or explicitly, cybernetically related. The more explicit these relationships are made the more is the probability of emergent properties between them with the respective synergies generated by co-regulative negative feedback (or feed-forward) and potential co-amplificatory positive feedback. This forward also shows, briefly and schematically, the cybernetic relationships between 'reflections' and 'reflexion'. The latter is based on Second Order Cybernetics which, in turn, is based on the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, mainly supported by Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Niels Bohr's Complementarity Principle.
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This is a book review of a somewhat unusual sort. It aims to introduce to the readers of JRP a book that ought to have been published but never has--the English version of Frederic Vester’s The Art of Network Thinking. I should mention that Vester himself proposed as title “The Art of Networked Thinking”; however, I prefer to speak of “network thinking.” This sounds less awkward and it conveys the central idea well--thinking in terms of networks. Unfortunately, there seems to be no completely satisfactory English translation of the phrase vernetztes Denken [pronounce: fer-nets-tes den-ken]. Its meaning is rather rich and includes notions of holistic (in the sense of integrated and global) thinking, of thinking in terms of multiple causation and dynamic interdependencies, in cycles rather than linear cause-effect chains, and so on.
The Impending Demise of Scientific Realism
The problem of consciousness cannot consistently be approached from the third person's perspective – less well known is that neither can any other scientific problem. Even if partly successful the classical realistic (or Newtonian) approach to science is bound to fail because of this restricted perspective. The knowledge feedback paths of human brain is one reason and the ”inside” features of qualia another. Here the claim is advanced that when we abandon the realist’s doctrine we are able to remove many imperfections. When instead using a subject-oriented approach to knowledge we will in one strike remove the bewildering Cartesian dualism, the troublesome chasm between the natural sciences and humanities and open the door for a science of consciousness. This paper is concerned mainly with giving the background to a general outline to human knowledge and thinking - the subject-oriented (subjectivist’s) approach - which neither divides mind from matter, the observer from the observed nor the subject from the object. What is described here is, however, only the beginning of or the path to the subject-oriented way of thinking, which, it is hoped, can be further presented later. The aim here is rather to pave the way for such a reorientation of our scientific thinking by pointing out some severe shortcomings of the classical object-oriented (objectivist’s) approach to knowledge that has been the prevailing scientific approach since the days of Galileo and Newton. It is probably better known under the name of scientific realism – or the Newtonian paradigm.