Stuart A. Umpleby: Second Order Cybernetics Then and Now (Heinz von Foerster Lecture 2013)

University of Vienna, 18th November 2013
When Heinz von Foerster coined the term "second order
cybernetics," his goal was to include the observer in the
domain of science. This was a fundamental change in the
conception of science, and Heinz encountered stiff opposition.
One consequence of including the observer would be to extend
cybernetics (and science) into the domain of ethics. Scientists
had previously sought to be objective. Including the observer
made science a subjective enterprise. This suggestion was
strongly resisted by Heinz's colleagues in the UIUC College of
Engineering and elsewhere in the U.S. academic community.
Since Heinz retired and moved to California, the people involved
in cybernetics in the U.S. have been mostly social scientists.
Rather than people with backgrounds in neurophysiology,
psychology, mathematics and philosophy, those interested in
cybernetics tended to be therapists, management scientists,
sociologists and people concerned with design. Including the
observer in science led to interest in scientific theories as part
of social systems. Several conceptions of second order science
have now been formulated. If we use the correspondence
principle (i.e., every new theory should reduce to the old theory
to which it corresponds for those cases in which the old theory
is known to hold), we can say that two dimensions have been
added to the conception of science: a) amount of attention paid
to the observer, and b) the amount of effect of a theory on the
phenomenon described.
Stuart Umpleby is a professor of management at the George
Washington University in Washington, DC. He studied with
Heinz von Foerster and Ross Ashby at the University of Illinois
in Urbana-Champaign. He is a past president of the American
Society for Cybernetics.

[@mbalihlatshwayo1826]

thanks for the great presentation that clarified cybernetics beautifully

[@user-ob9zo9cr4c]

rip

[@dagstranneby]

A poor video, too much presenter and too few slides were shown...

[@jamesgibson3582]

Some other university lectures I have seen say they keep focused on the speaker to avoid potential copyright issues on slides.