Second-Order Cybernetics, Radical Constructivism, and the Biology of Cognition: Paradigms Struggling to Bring About Change 1

Constructivist Foundations, 2010

> Context • The enactive paradigm in the cognitive sciences is establishing itself as a strong and comprehensive alternative to the computationalist mainstream. However, its own particular historical roots have so far been largely ignored in the historical analyses of the cognitive sciences. > Problem • In order to properly assess the enactive paradigm’s theoretical foundations in terms of their validity, novelty and potential future directions of development, it isessential for us to know more about the history of ideas that has led to the current state of affairs. > Method • The meaning of the disappearance of the field of cybernetics and the rise of second-order cybernetics is analyzed by taking a closer look at the work of representative figures for each of the phases – Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow for the early wave of cybernetics, Ashby for its culmination, and von Foerster for the development of the second-order approach. > Results • It is argued that the disintegration of cybernetics eventually resulted in two distinct scientific traditions, one going from symbolic AI to modern cognitive science on the one hand, and the other leading fromsecond-order cybernetics to the current enactive paradigm. > Implications • We can now understand that the extent to which the cognitive sciences have neglected their cybernetic parent is precisely the extent to which cybernetics hadalready carried the tendencies that would later find fuller expression in second-order cybernetics.

2001

Cybernetics and Systems, 1997

Catastrophes: A History and Theory of an Operative Concept, 2014

In recent years the field of cybernetics has been described as consisting of two bodies of work created in two time periods: first order cybernetics from the late 1940s until about 1975, and second order cybernetics from the mid 1970s to the present. Each period lasted about 25 years. What comes next? I shall describe here what I think comes next and how the new point of view emerged, at least in my own thinking.

Kybernetes, 2020

Design Research Foundations, 2019

Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2011

Varela is well known in the systems sciences for his work on second-order cybernetics, biology of cognition and especially autopoietic theory. His concern during this period was to find an appropriate epistemological foundation for the self-reference inherent in life and mind. In his later years, Varela began to develop the so-called ‘enactive’ approach to cognitive science, which sets itself apart from other sciences by promoting a careful consideration of concrete experiential insights. His final efforts were thus dedicated to finding a pragmatic phenomenological foundation for life and mind. It is argued that Varela’s experiential turn—from epistemology to phenomenology—can be seen as a natural progression that builds on many ideas that were already implicit in second-order cybernetics and biology of cognition. It is also suggested that the rigorous study of conscious experience may enable us to refine our theories and systemic concepts of life, mind and sociality.