Departmental Papers (ASC)
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
2008
Abstract
In the history of cybernetics there have been several attempts by cyberneticians to put themselves into the circularities of their theories and designs, invoking a shift from the cybernetics of mechanisms to a cybernetics of cybernetics. The latter is the title of a book chapter by Margaret Mead (1968) and of Heinz von Foerster’s (1974) edited compilation of articles on cybernetics. Foerster introduced the concept of second-order cybernetics which may have overshadowed or sidelined other reflexivities. I am attempting to recover four reflexive turns, describe their origin, implications, and suggest ways in which they continue what Karl Müller (2007) calls an unfinished revolution. These turns are not discussed here in their historical succession but as conceptual expansions of cybernetics.
Keywords
cybernetics, reflexivity, observation, participation
Included in
Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Engineering Commons, Epistemology Commons, Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, Philosophy of Language Commons, Sociology Commons
Date Posted: 27 August 2009
This document has been peer reviewed.
Comments
Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Volume 15, Number 3-4: 173-184, 2008