New Horizons For Second-order Cybernetics

In almost 60 articles this book reviews the current state of second-order cybernetics and investigates which new research methods second-order cybernetics can offer to tackle wicked problems in science and in society. The contributions explore its application to both scientific fields (such as mathematics, psychology and consciousness research) and non-scientific ones (such as design theory and theater science). The book uses a pluralistic, multifaceted approach to discuss these applications: Each main article is accompanied by several commentaries and author responses, which together allow the reader to discover further perspectives than in the original article alone. This procedure shows that second-order cybernetics is already on its way to becoming an idea shared by many researchers in a variety of disciplines.Contents: Prologue: A Brief History of (Second-Order) Cybernetics (Louis H Kauffman & Stuart A Umpleb) Mapping the Varieties of Second-Order Cybernetics (Karl H Müller & Alexander Riegle) Part I: Exploring Second-Order Cybernetics and Its Fivefold Agenda: Second-Order Cybernetics as a Fundamental Revolution in Science (Stuart A Umpleby) Obstacles and Opportunities in the Future of Second-Order Cybernetics and Other Compatible Methods (Allenna Leonard) Connecting Second-Order Cybernetics' Revolution with Genetic Epistemology (Gastón Becerra) Shed the Name to Find Second-Order Success: Renaming Second-Order Cybernetics to Rescue its Essence (Michael R Lissack) Beware False Dichotomies (Peter A Cariani) Second-Order Cybernetics Needs a Unifying Methodology (Thomas R Flanagan) Viva the Fundamental Revolution! Confessions of a Case Writer (T Grandon Gill) Author's Response: Struggling to Define an Identity for Second-Order Cybernetics (Stuart A Umpleby) Cybernetics, Reflexivity and Second-Order Science (Louis H Kauffman) Remarks From a Continental Philosophy Point of View (Tatjana Schönwälder-Kuntze) Finally Understanding Eigenforms (Michael R Lissack) Eigenforms, Coherence, and the Imaginal (Arthur M Collings) Conserving the Disposition for Wonder (Kathleen Forsythe) Author's Response: Distinction, Eigenform and the Epistemology of the Imagination (Louis H Kauffman) Cybernetic Foundations for Psychology (Bernard Scott) Wielding the Cybernetic Scythe in the Blunting Undergrowth of Psychological Confusion (Vincent Kenny) To What Extent Can Second-Order Cybernetics Be a Foundation for Psychology? (Marcelo Arnold-Cathalifaud & Daniela Thumala-Dockendorff) The Importance — and the Difficulty — of Moving Beyond Linear Causality (Robert J Martin) Obstacles to Cybernetics Becoming a Conceptual Framework and Metanarrative in the Psychologies (Philip Baron) The Social and the Psychological: Conceptual Cybernetic Unification vs Disciplinary Analysis? (Eva Buchinger) Second Thoughts on Cybernetic Unifications (Tilia Stingl de Vasconcelos Guedes) Cybernetics and Synergetics as Foundations for Complex Approach Towards Complexities of Life (Lea Šugman Bohinc) Author's Response: On Becoming and Being a Cybernetician (Bernard Scott) Consciousness as Self-Description in Differences (Diana Gasparyan) On the Too Often Overlooked Complexity of the Tension between Subject and Object (Yochai Ataria) Where Is Consciousness? (Urban Kordeš) Theorizing Agents: Their Games, Hermeneutical Tools and Epistemic Resources (Konstantin Pavlov-Pinus) How Can Meaning be Grounded within a Closed Self-Referential System? (Bryony Pierce) Self-Description Alone Will not Account for Qualia (John Pickering) Consciousness as Self-Description and the Inescapability of Reduction (Sergei Levin) The Non-Relationality of Consciousness (Adriana Schetz) Author's Response: Phenomenology of the System: Intentionality, Differences, Understanding, and the Unity of Consciousness (Diana Gasparyan) Design Research as a Variety of Second-Order Cybernetic Practice (Ben Sweeting) Design Cycles: Conversing with Lawrence Halprin (Tom Scholte) Understanding Design from a...