In the beginning was the word, and primitive societies venerated poets second only to their leaders. A poet had the power to name, and so to control; he was, literally, the living memory of a group or tribe who would perpetuate their history in song;
Kevin Crossley-Holland, The Norse Myths, p. 190
In reading Norse Mythology, one is faced with the task of understanding the deeply condensed metaphors, or kennings, that imbue the sagas with much of their flavor and character. The myths build on themselves and embody their own evolution in such a way that it becomes essential to know that 'Otter's ransom' and 'Fafnir's lair' are kennings for 'gold.' In the Prose Edda, particularly in the part called 'Skaldskaparmal' (Poetic Diction), Snorri Sturluson describes rules for poetic diction and links knowing how to compose in the scaldic tradition to being familiar with (knowing, in this sense) the kennings (Crossley-Holland, 1980). In so doing he links human knowing to an understanding of the traditions and history of interactions of which we, by our participation, become a part, AND to the mutualness that inheres in metaphoric processes of "seeing-as" - a connection that might find more modern parallels in the later Wittgenstein (cf, Philosophical Investigation, 1958), and modern cybernetic thought. Indeed, it is useful to understand that the meaning of kenning has its roots in the Old Norse, kenna, which has been translated as "to name with a kenning, or to know". So a kind of metaphoric process is inextricably linked with a kind of knowing. I say "a kind of" here, not in any strictly classificatory sense, but rather to acknowledge that many languages, including the Scandinavian languages, have different terms for describing what become for English speakers, different kinds of "knowing". Thus, in learning a Scandinavian language, or many other languages for that matter, a native English speaker must defamiliarize himself or herself with usual orientations (Becker, 1989), and, for example, learn to separate knowing facts from other sorts of knowing processes, including those, as the idea of kenning evokes, of "becoming familiar with."
In a journal that chooses its entitlement as Cybernetics and Human Knowing, linking knowing processes to cybernetics means becoming acutely aware of the ways of forming connections, of the ways of seeing-as. And as Bateson (1991) did in "Men Are Grass" [Grass dies, men die, men are grass], it means becoming aware of metaphoric process as itself a root metaphor in the production of knowledge - a production that in Western thought has often been tied exclusively to certain kinds of syllogistic reasoning, such as the "Barbara", or Socrates syllogism [Men die, Socrates is a man, Socrates will die]. Indeed, it was precisely this exclusivity that Bateson tried to dispel in linking knowing to metaphoric process, and ultimately, to a cybernetic epistemology.
Cybernetic knowing embraces kennings and metaphoric process. Yet, in an anti-discipline such as cybernetics, we must become aware of the metaphors we use to refer to those selfsame knowing processes. Thus, as Salmond (1982) notes, there is quite a difference between the English metaphor of knowledge as a landscape, which invites having perspectives of a ground that is inexhaustible, and, for example, Maori metaphors of knowledge that evoke its exhausti-bleness and destructibility, and require a sensitivity to the need for its continual production and reproduction (in a tradition evocative of that which Snorri Sturluson attempted to create and sustain in his reliance on kennings in his Prose Edda). Indeed there is not only a difference between different ways of forming the usu-al 'knowledge as vision' metaphors (a cyber-netic 'perspective' , or 'point' of view, compared to cybernetics as a "way of seeing" that features a process), but also an awareness of the different kinds of consensuality (feeling, hearing) through which we might "envision" different manners of knowing practices.
Further, in an anti-discipline such as cybernetics, where self-reference is legitimized as both explanatory and evidentiary, we must become sensitive to the mutualness of any metaphoric process. That is by referring to something (or some process) as something else, we cannot assume the referent as having a fixed meaning for all. Any meaning-creation is shaped by what is "doing the referring" and who is forming the connection, the "seeing-as". Thus, in saying "Our organization is a family" it cannot be assumed that we all think of family (and then, of course, our organization) in the same way - for some may use the metaphor to construct a happy and harmonious family (and then organization), while others create one founded on constant bickering. In addition, such a connection allows for a re-understanding of "family" through the very process of its being referred to in that particular manner and context (cf, Sapir, 1977, for an extension of this point). We must be aware of how, as Wagner (1986) notes, symbols can stand for themselves. Yet, this 'symbolic' self-reference is done with an other, through which we make and see our 'selves'.
We must also be aware of how our process of forming connections and mutualnesses is integral to any seeing or feeling in a new way that is at the heart of any creative enterprise. Indeed, just as scientific and technological discoveries are often imbued with a (sometimes mystical) flash of a 'seeing-as', as with Watson and Crick's double helix or Kekule's ring, new knowledge becomes equated with being able to effectively use a metaphor which has socially situated currency. I mention this here because cybernetics, which is so often linked to a new age of technological wizardry in cyberspace by cyberpunks, can and must relocate these strictly techno-metaphors - without losing them - in a broader landscape or even a broader process. While we rely heavily on such kennings as Ashby's homeostat and the Turing machine as part of the history we, as cyberneticians, sustain and recreate, we also need to be aware of the process of how WE generate these particular ways of forming connections. Cybernetic connections are born of a tradition of centrality of "mutual and circular feedback processes in social and biological systems" that were the Macy conferences (c.f., Heims, 1991 for an elaboration of these crucial meetings). In this tradition we have evolved to embrace, through second order cybernetic ideas, what Shotter (1990) identifies as a critical circular relationship between making and finding worlds. Shotter notes how what we find ("finding") in our worlds is rooted in how we construct those worlds ("making"), while our "finding", in turn, 'lends' structure to the very "making" of those worlds we construct. Processes of making and finding (worlds) thus mutually determine each other and then, themselves. Processes of making and finding mutual relationships (which we can call mutualling) is cybernetics.
A cybernetic tradition
A recognition of circular processes of many kinds has become the hallmark of a cybernetic epistemology (Bateson, 1972). In fact, as von Foerster (1987) notes, "Should one name one central concept, a first principle, of cybernetics, it would be circularity." Cybernetics, in its early formulation, was concerned with communication and control in the animal and the machine (Wiener, 1948). In defining cybernetics, the choice of "in", rather than "of", was not whimsical, for it allowed for a focus on processes of self-regulation and self-organization (McCulloch,1974). Early cybernetic work focused on circular causal feedback mechanisms, and applications of these mechanisms, together with the principles underlying them (see, e.g., Heims, 1991), - principles which, in many views (cf, Gardner, 1987) underlay the explosion of the computer/cognitive sciences, and indeed are credited with being at the heart of connectionist and neural network approaches in computing. This focus on connections of many different sorts was achieved through developing an understanding, in both a theoretical and a practical sense, of processes involving circularity and self- reference.
Margaret Mead (1968), in a paper entitled, "Cybernetics of Cybernetics," spoke to a desire and hope for cybernetic understanding to foster a development of a new "language" to deal with interdisciplinary issues, and to the need for cyberneticians to examine their own organiza-tion, effectively applying cybernetics to itself. Second-order cybernetics was thus born. Heinz von Foerster (1974, 79) then forced the issue by shifting the focus from a cybernetically-oriented concern with systems that could be ob-served, to one more clearly including and then focusing on those doing the observing -- hence, his identification of second order cybernetics with that of observing systems (and what we might call "observing observing"). The implications of this shift are enormous, but have yet to become fully realized, particularly with regard to epistemolological and methodological concerns.
It can be argued that although it might make sense to apply any process to itself (such as the physics of physics), the practice of cybernetics, by definition, necessitates that we do so. What has emerged as cyberneticians have turned cybernetics onto itself, is a concern, not just with distinctions that create "circular feedback mechanisms" and "mutual relationships" that may be observed, but also with our observing processes and actions that allow our observations to become realized. A second order cybernetics forces us to recognize ourselves as observers, and to accept responsibility for our observations, descriptions and explanations, rather than merely reporting the state of an independently existing universe. But rather than being subsumed within a strictly cognitive enterprise, an awareness of the embedded relationships of observing forces us to contextually recognize the various mutually defining relationships to which our knowing activities are tied. In short, we must concern ourselves with how WE build up our systems of knowing and acting. Cybernetic knowing is a self-reflexive enterprise, but it is a self-reflexiveness that is at once a social process, accomplished in dialogue, and indeed requiring others (cf, the various essays in Steier, 1991).
Understanding the processes of our own constructions as revealed in our systems of knowing and acting, and locating them in a tradition within which they fit (or make sense) and, in turn, sustain, has had dramatic effects on the ways that cyberneticians have come to understand their own everyday activities. Indeed, it is through what might be called a cybernetic awareness that such everyday activities have been redefined within the cybernetic community and in those whose lives are touched by our interactions and conversations. We thus have witnessed more relational formulations of such traditionally univocal and strictly other-directed activities as planning and designing (c.f., Richards [1989], Herbst [1974], Greenbaum and Kyng [1991]) and research (c.f., Steier, 1991) such that they become rethought as more participatory (other based) AND more selfreflexive. Designing, planning and researching become activities in which knowing in those domains is embedded in relationships that are best understood by cybernetic principles. They are activities in which knowing is participatory and embedded in what Vickers referred to as an ecology of ideas (1968), a concept later developed and extended by Bateson (1979). It is an ecology of ideas whose eco-ness depends on an appreciation of the participation of those others whom our activities both affect and rely on.
Thus, cybernetics has evolved to include a mutualness of self-reference through the observing of otherness coupled with the otherness of observing. As cyberneticians, we have done this through a continual recursive (in the second order sense) re-enactment and then re-creation of our own tradition, knowing it in the scaldic sense ("being familiar with"), while continuing to develop ways of expressing to ourselves and others the mutual processes that we mark as important.
Those interested in where cybernetics has evolved today can look at the names that have been offered as titles of the most recent (American Society for Cybernetics) cybernetic conferences. Today's conference organizers are as poets who have the power to name and thereby create possibilities for particular kinds of connections for all of us: Cybernetics as Connections, as Ecological Understanding, and as its own Evolution and Praxis1 are three most recent offerings.
From hierarchy to participation: Contrasts with systems theory
In its inherent concern with interdependence formed of relationships between parts of a system, rather than an atomistic reduction of systems to separable component parts, cybernetics has often been linked to general systems theory. While it is true that there is much in common between systems theorists and cyberneticians, there are also crucial differences. One main difference centers on what is offered as a main principle of systems theory, (as put forth by systems theorists, for example, von Bertalanffy [1968]), concerning the necessity of a particular form of relationship, namely that of hierarchy. The necessity of hierarchy is often linked by systems theorists to any evolution of complex systems, and to their understanding (cf, Simon, 1969). Hierarchy, as a property of complex relationships, is then often taken axiomatically as an unassailable 'given' to which one must be true in order to claim a systems approach. Unfortunately, we have moved from recognizing hierarchy as a useful organizing device for some systems of relationships (as Simon [1969] notes in his parable of the watchmakers, Hora and Tempus), to seeing it as necessary in all systems. Further, we have failed to consider the consequences for systems of human knowing (and for what a systemic approach might actually minimally require) as well as for organizations, built on principles of hierarchy. Indeed, as Herbst (1976) points out in his Alternatives to Hierarchies, it is precisely this reliance on hierarchy as a system of thinking that leads to a totalitarian (in the sense of dictated from the top) logic. Herbst (1976, 87) calls for replacing the totalitarian logic which forms the bedrock of our dominant systems of knowing with a contextual logic (tied to, and growing from Spencer-Brown's [1969] self-referential based Laws of Form).
Herbst's contextual logic is classically cybernetic in its reliance on a mutualness inherent in any self-referential system. It is not mere coincidence that he links his contextual logic to a way of researching where the product of research is a new (self-maintaining learning) process tied to a collaborative researcher/ 'researched' relationship. It is here that the difference between systems theory and cybernetics is most striking. As noted above, cybernetics, from its inception, has insisted on mutualnesses and circularities of many forms. Causality, if one chooses this explanatory route, is but one of many possible circular relationships that define how we construct the systems in which we are embedded and with which we interact. Indeed, circularity is but one of many kinds of [spatial] metaphors of mutualness, as has been noted by those trying to enable a more emancipatory process out of reflexive concerns (e.g., Steier, 1991; Gergen and Gergen, 1991) with a spiraling whose "referring back" moves a knowing process to a different, and unspecifiable in advance, dimension. Additionally, it is a "referring back" (or self-reference) that is done through or with an "other", an other that simultaneously participates in its own self-reference. Cybernetics thus is immersed in logics of participation.
A consequence of the connectivities of this sort is that cybernetics becomes a way of knowing that gives voice to all of those who participate in the knowing process, in Herbst's collaborative sense, and in a decidedly nonhierarchical fashion. It is a paradigm of conversing in the sense of turning together, with others, [cf, Steier, 1992], rather than a reliance on a universing dictated by those who claim to be objectively outside of, and unaffected by their knowledge claims and observations, and whose research subjects are subjected to being told what they "really are doing." A choice between cybernetics and systems theory is then a political one that has implications for an ethic one embraces with regard to an attitude towards human knowing in many senses. Indeed, colleagues and I have taken to referring to those with whom we are engaged in research, traditionally referred to as subjects or informants, as reciprocators, following Ortega y Gasset [1957]. (Of course, reciprocation is a kind of mutualness). By so doing, we seek to recognize the importance of how we refer to each other as another kind of mutualness connected to systems of human knowing.
An Eastern connection
Cybernetics can be seen as the most Eastern of Western philosophies; postmodern concerns with the harmony that results from giving voice to multiple descriptions, and with relational understanding mark this interhemispherical connection even more strongly. It is interesting to note that Takeshi Umehara (1992), in discussing the Confucian roots that may be at the heart of postmodernism, refers to a reliance on both mutualism and cyclicity (where cyclicity can be understood as a kind of a mutualism and self-reference across time). Umehara notes that in Japanese, the word ningen, meaning person, originally meant "between people", and this relational root allows for ethics to be understood as being between people. Umehara remarks that
The central principles of the postmodern world view then, are mutualism and cyclicity: mutualism - ethics born out of a relationship with the "other" and nature instead of from the self-interest of the absolute individual; and cyclicity - an ethics of generational responsibility born of the belief in continuous rebirth, a belief in the fusion of being and becoming in to a time of eternal recurrence. (p. 13).
It is perhaps not surprising then, that the current Western fascination with Eastern management philosophies born of a reliance on mutualism and cyclicity, would seem to fit well with cybernetic principles in the praxis of organizational and extra-organizational life. Moreover by focusing on the process basis that is so much ingrained in Confucian thought, we can re-understand the history of cybernetics as concerned with the processes of making and finding mutualisms - Cybernetics as an art and science where closed systems means connected systems.
The poetic diction of cybernetics as mutualling
Cybernetics is about understanding relationships and making connections in many senses. These range from understanding metaphoric process and seeing-as as described in this essay, to the inter-personal linkages that allow cybernetics to be a place where artists and biologists, cognitive scientists and family therapists, information scientists and educators, and filmmakers and managers confer and jointly stipulate worlds. It is about recognizing the ecological processes that simultaneously make us sensitive to the multiple environments in which our knowing processes are embedded AND to our own "household" that creates the necessity of a reflexive awareness so critical to cybernetic knowing. It is about understanding how our everyday activities are informed by our multiply cybernetic ways of seeing, feeling and hearing in the conversations in which we locate ourselves. Our seeing connections and our ecological understanding are linked to action in our everyday praxis, building on our own histories of interactions, which in turn inform our ever cascading reinterpretation of what is cybernetics - cybernetics as a self-reflexive generative metaphor whose meaning is tied to an everyday praxis of multiple ways of knowing in a context.
Cybernetics has been many things to many people, with the history of cybernetics marked by a multiplicity of definitions. These include Warren McCulloch's experimental epistemology concerned with the generation of knowledge through communication, Gregory Bateson's forms and patterns that connect, and Gordon Pask's art of manipulating defensible metaphors2. A thread linking the many definitions would be a concern for connections in the form of mutual relationships that determine each other, and ultimately then, each self. As cyberneticians we are, as Heinz von Foerster has stated many times, poets, poets who have the power to "see as" and thereby to name (and to control, in that creative sense). Thus, the poetic diction of cybernetics embodies processes of knowing through seeing-as, as a making of mutual relationships, and processes of finding, or seeing mutual relationships in those constructions we have made. Cybernetics as... mutualling.
Notes
References
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