Cybernetics & Human Knowing - Thesaurus pilot project
Edited by M&T Thellefsen

Mechanicism

Definition
A biological outlook which asserts that the only factors operating in the organization of living systems are physical factors, and

that no non-material vital organizing force is necessary.

Relations:
machine **
mechanistic biology
function

 

Articles:

1997
A Cybernetic Musing: In the Animal and the Machine / Ranulph Glanville. -  vol. 4 no. 4

Definitions:

Principia Cybernetica
Encyclopedia Autopoietica
International Encyclopedia of Systems & Cybernetics

 

Principia Cybernetica (web)
a biological outlook which asserts that the only factors operating in the organization of living systems are physical factors, and

that no non-material vital organizing force is necessary. (Maturana and Varela, 1979)

Derives from the use of the machine METAPHOR in sciences concerned with man and denotes any STRUCTURE or

configuration of attitudes, social positions, cultural patterns, FUNCTIONs, interactions, etc. that facilitates or brings about a

product or an end regardless of whether it is consciously implemented, has naturally evolved or is perceived by its participants.

(Krippendorff)

 

Encyclopedia Autopoietica
The fundamental approach taken by Maturana and Varela in addressing living systems: ".. a biological outlook which asserts that the only factors operating in the organization of living systems are physical factors, and that no non-material vital organizing force is necessary." (1980, p. 137) This position is not necessarily isomorphic with the 'mechanism' or 'mechanistic approach' attributed (typically in the course of criticism) to a variety of reductionist, rationalistic enterprises.

 

International Encyclopedia of Systems & Cybernetics
According to J.L.LE MOIGNE, the cybernetic paradigm may be considered "as an extreme form of the mecanicist paradigm" (1990, p.33)

This is in fact mainly the case of the first cybernetics as it was proposed and explained by N. WIENER who, as a practically oriented mathematician, insisted on the "control and communication in the animal and the machine."

It is indeed obvious that these first cybernetic models maintained a quite reductionist bias and were mainly applied to stabilization problems by introduction of strictly limitative constraints. It was mainly by the use of negative feedback that these were introduced, even if only a convenient sequence of negative and positive feedbacks is apt to produce a permanent regulation.

This initial cybernetic mechanicism made bybernetics quite suspect to psychologists and sociologists, who feared its possible use to justify or even organize som "Big Brother" type of social and individual control. These qualms unfortunately closed Their minds to M. MARUYAMA’s 2nd cybernetics (processes of deviation and amplification by mutual causality) and still more to the cybernetics of 2nd order of H. von FOERSTER, related to self-organizing systems, and to the conversation concepts of G. PASK.