CYBERNETICS & HUMAN KNOWING

A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics, Autopoiesis & Cyber-Semiotics

Volume 6, No.3 1999

The ASC Pages
An Invitation for Conversation and Reflection

By Pille Bunnell

ASC: American Society for Cybernetics
a society for the art and science of human understanding

Welcome!

I have been invited, in my role as President of the American Society for Cybernetics, to act as a guest editor of a new column in this Journal, namely The ASC Pages. Given the nature of this short column, I intend to treat it as a window for ideas, as an evocation to look through the particular perspectives of individuals associated with the ASC. For the first several issues the column will comprise short essays contributed by members of the ASC Board of Trustees — all of whom will be invited to write something of their reflections, concerns, and visions about cybernetics. In particular they will be asked to illuminate some aspect of what they consider unique to the worldview of this society.

The American Society for Cybernetics was founded in 1964 inspired by the fertile development of cybernetics in the 1940’s and 50’s. Over the years it has transformed itself from a society dedicated to understanding circular causal processes, to a society whose members explore their own participation in the circularity of constituting the world we live. This cybernetics of cybernetics, or second-order cybernetics, as it is increasingly called, has generated many concepts, notably circularity and recursion, but most significantly, it explicitly recognizes that all the systems we humans study are studied by us humans; and thus have to do with us.

In his 1994 book Out Of Control, Kevin Kelly postulated that cybernetics was strangled by ‘putting the observer inside the box’. Contrary to this, I believe that the ASC is involved with the dissolution of that box, an opening to a fundamentally new way of seeing who we are and how we arise as living systems, of how, in our conversations with each other, we bring forth worlds, including the worlds of the traditional scientific disciplines. Thus second order cybernetics is concerned with the premises that guide our relationships and actions. It leads to a constitutive ontology that deals with the nature of that constitution.

This column is an invitation to reflect and converse. I believe that open reflection and conversation, and the emotional stance within which this happens, is of fundamental importance. In conversation we are inherently relational beings, transforming in congruence with each other and our circumstances. And through reflection, we see ourselves in our circumstances, and thus we are also changed, for we cannot help but act according to what we have seen.

Heinz von Foerster has agreed to contribute the first installment to this column. In the meantime I would like to open the space by submitting a poem. This poem is very much a personal vision — it is not intended to convey any new ideas, but rather to evoke a network of coherences that appear to me as integral, beautiful, and hopeful.

Modeling as ethical action

I sit in a beautiful oasis, a time out of time,
with the wind blowing through oaks
that stand in solid comfort of sculpted form
supporting Spanish mosses, and more -
accepting, perhaps welcoming,
birds; gleaning, or flitting through.
Here, surrounded by beauty
and a great pleasure in life, I reflect:

Knowledge. What is knowledge?
Nothing much, just the conduct
appropriate to the being and circumstance.
The crab knows what is appropriate for living as crab,
the armadillo and alligator each know the same,
but a human may know what is appropriate
to living in many different domains.

Understanding, then, what is understanding?
It is the mapping, sometimes leaping,
of knowledge from one domain to another,
an extension beyond the known domain
so behaviour is appropriate in a larger context.
I doubt that crab, armadillo, or alligator understand,
but humans may.

But how? How does human understanding arise?
Knowledge may be demonstrated and copied,
or even learned from tracks left on paper and such.
But understanding cannot be transferred.
Understanding is a poetic act,
that happens only when certitude is abandoned
and possibility is open, surprise is possible.
Understanding happens in play. Play?
Yes, play is activity with no prescribed goal,
it is the doing that is open to possibility,
surprise, and thus vision.

Yet there is another dimension to vision.
One cannot see, nor can play be,
If love does not orient the looking.
For love is that emotion in which one sees the other,
sees the other, and circumstance and accepts it
as legitimate, and lets it be that, just that —
not imputing what one has assumed, or desired.
Without love one sees only oneself — if that.

You may well ask —
What does this have to do with modeling?
My answer is grounded in what I have said.

A model is an abstraction made by a person.
Someone looks at the complex systems
of biosphere and human doings and sees
configurations, relationships, dynamics.
If this person looks in acceptance of the legitimacy
of what he or she sees,
knowing a domain of science,
while open to the surprising expansion of understanding,
without certitude, without prescription or preconception,
Then the modeler expands science in love and play.

But there is yet more:

What is responsibility?
It is not duty, or promise
to behave some particular way
desired by some authority.
Responsibility is living in the awareness and acceptance
of the possible consequences of one’s behaviour.

And freedom, what is freedom?
Freedom is the experience of choosing what one chooses
in awareness and acceptance of its consequence.
Thus one experiences freedom in the narrow constraints of
surfing, skiing and climbing, or in the impeccability
of pursuing a path in the desire of the desire of that path,
regardless of the constraints that may bound it.

And ethics?
Simply, care for the other.
Ethical behaviour is acting in concern
for the wellbeing of other -
whether one friend, or many peoples,
whether one bird, or the biosphere.

We humans can live responsibility and freedom
in an ethical orientation.
And when we live knowledge and understanding
in an ethical orientation -
why, then we are wise!
A wise person understands the consequence of local action
in a broader context, and chooses such action in care.
Now I can say how modeling may be ethical.

Modeling is not about prediction, this we know.
But we may not have noticed that modeling
creates the conditions for reflecting
upon the consequences of our behaviour.
Thus, modeling is an invitation to responsibility.
And further, it is a an opportunity
for the experience of freedom
as it provides a framework for reflection
‘Do I indeed want what I want?’

This is no little thing.
If lived in love and play!
Modeling done in openness of vision
and playful exploration,
evokes understanding,
invokes responsibility,
invites freedom and ethics.
Thus, thus indeed, it may alter the path
of what we humans become.

(adapted from a poem written to my friend and mentor, Dr. C.S. Holling, on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Florida, summer, 1999)

References

K. Kelly (1994) Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World, Addison Wesley.

CYBERNETICS & HUMAN KNOWING

Contents:

The ASC Pages An Invitation for Conversation and Reflection

The ASC Pages
An Invitation for Conversation and Reflection