New Cybernetics

New Cybernetics is a study of self-organizing systems, looking beyond the issues of the "first", "old" or "original" cybernetics and their politics and sciences of control, to the autonomy and self-organization capabilities of complex systems. New cybernetics is otherwise known as the cybernetics of cybernetics or second order cybernetics, and second order cybernetics is called a new cybernetics.

Overview

The so-called "new cybernetics" is an attempt to move away from the cybernetics of Norbert Wiener. Old cybernetics is tied to the image of the machine and physics; whereas, new cybernetics closely resembles organisms and biology. The main task of the new cybernetics is to overcome entropy by using "noise" as positive feedback.

In 1992 Gordon Pask summarized the differences between the old and the new cybernetics as a shift in emphasis:

• ... from information to coupling
• ... from the reproduction of "order-from-order" (Schroedinger 1944) to the generation of "order-from-noise" (von Foerster 1960)
• ... from transmission of data to conversation
• ... from external to participant observation - in short, from "CCC" to an approach that could be assimilated to Matura and Varela's concept to autopoiesis.

Gertrudis van de Vijver stated in 1994, that the old cybernetics, the new cybernetics and the cognitive paradigms are not that revolutionary different from each other, and as is mostly the case, the so-called new paradigms are in a sense "older" that the "old" paradigms. The so-called "old" paradigms were in most cases strategically successful specializations in a general framework. Their success was based on a strong but useful simplification of the issues. The "new" paradigms are further specializations in the earlier one, or (as is mostly the case) a strategic retreat which broadens the specialized approach and is a return to the original, broader inspiration and outlook. This is what happens, we believe, with the new cybernetics, the post-cybernetics, as well as with the new cognitive approach...

History

In March 1946, the first of ten influential interdisciplinary Macy conferences were devoted to the, then also called, new cybernetics, and opened with two presentations: the first by von Neumann on the new computing machines, followed by neurobiologist Lorente de No on the electric properties of the nervous system. These circuiting of analogies between behaviour of computers and the nervous system became central to cybernetic imagination and its founding desire to define the essential "unity of a set of problems" organized around "communication, control, and statistical mechanics, whether in the machine or living tissue. In particular, the early cyberneticists are convinced that research on computers and the organization of the human brain are one and the same field, that is, "the subject embracing both the engineering and the neurology aspect is essentially one."

Wiener defined cybernetics in 1948 as the study of "control and communication of the animal and the machine". This definition captures the original ambition of cybernetics to appear as a unified theory of behaviour of living organisms and machines, viewed as systems governed by the same physical laws. The initial phase of cybernetics involved disciplines more or less directly related to the study of those systems, like communication and control engineering, biology, psychology, logic, and neurophysiology. Very soon, a number of attempts were made to place the concept of control at the focus of analysis also in other fields, such as economics, sociology, and anthropology. The ambition of "classic" cybernetics thus seemed to involve also several human sciences, as it developed in a highly interdisciplinary approach, aimed at seeking common concepts and methods in rather different disciplines. In classic cybernetics this ambition did not produce the desired results and new approaches had to be attempted in order to achieve them, at least partially.

In the 1970s New cybernetics has emerged in multiple fields, first in biology. Some biologists influenced by cybernetic concepts (Maturana and Varela, 1980); Varela, 1979; Atlan, 1979) realized that the cybernetic metaphors of the program upon which molecular biology had been based rendered a conception of the autonomy of the living being impossible. Consequently, these thinkers were led to invent a new cybernetics, one more suited to the organization of mankind discovers in nature - organizations he has not himself invented. The possibility that this new cybernetics could also account for social forms of organization, remained an object of debate among theoreticians on self-organization in the 1980s.

In political science in the 1980s unlike its predecessor, the new cybernetics concerns itself with the interaction of autonomous political actors and subgroups and the practical can reflexive consciousness of the subject who produce and reproduce the structure of political community. A dominant consideration is that of recursiveness, or self-reference of political action both with regards to the expression of political consciousness and with the ways in which systems build upon themselves.

Geyer and van der Zouwen in 1978 discuss a number of characteristics of the merging "new cybernetics". One characteristic of new cybernetics is that it views information as construct and reconstructed by an individual interacting with the environment. This provides an epistemological foundation of science, by viewing it as observer-dependent. Another characteristic of the new cybernetics is its contribution towards bridging the "micro-macro gap". That is, it link the individual with the society. Geyer and van derZouten also noted that a transition form classical cybernetics to the new cybernetics involves a transition form classical problems to new problems. These shifts in the thinking involve, among others a change form emphasis on the system being steered to the system doing the steering, and the factor which guide the steering decisions. And new emphasis on communication between several systems which are trying to steer each other.

New Cybernetics: Topics

Just as quantum theory has superseded classical physics, so the new cybernetics approach has superseded the classical theory of communication. According to F. Merrel (1988) in this new era, and speaking generally of the reigning conceptual framework, incompleteness, openness, inconsistency, statistical models, undecidability, indeterminacy, complementarity, polycity, interconnectedness, and fields and frames and references are the order of the day.

Geyer & J. van der Zouwen (1992) recognize four themes in both sociocybernetics and new cybernetics:

• To give an epistemological foundation for science as an observer-observer system. Feedback and feedforward loops are constructed not only between the observer, but also between the object that are observed, but also between them and the observer.
• The transition form classical, rather mechanistic first order cybernetics to modern, second order cybernetics, characterized by the differences summarized by Gordon Pask.
• These problems shifts in cybernetics involve an extremely thorough reconceptualization of many all too easily accepted and taken for granted concepts -- which yield new notions of stability, temporality, independence, structure versus behaviour, and many other concepts.
• The actor-oriented systems approach, promulgated in 1978 made it possible to bridge the "micro-macro" gap in social science thinking.

Other topics where new cybernetics is developed are:

• Artificial neural network
  
• Living systems
• New robotic approaches
• Reflexive understanding
• Political communication
• Social dimensions of cognitive science
• Sustainable development
• Symbolic Artificial Intelligence
• Systemic group therapy

Types of new Cybernetics

Cybernetics of cybernetics

The term "Cybernetics of cybernetics" is also called "second order cybernetics".

Organisational cybernetics

Organizational cybernetics is distinguished from management cybernetics. Both uses many of the same terms but interpret them according to another philosophy of systems thinking. Organizational cybernetics by contrast offers a significant break with the assumption of the hard approach. The full flowering of organizational cybernetics is represented by Beer's Viable System Model.

Organizational Cybernetics (OC) studies organizational design, and the regulation and self-regulation of organizations from a systems theory perspective that also takes the social dimension into consideration. Researchers in economics, public administration and political science focus on the changes in institutions, organisation and mechanisms of social steering at various levels (sub-national, national, European, international) and in different sectors (including the private, semi-private and public sectors; the latter sector is emphasised).

Sociocybernetics

The reformulation of sociocybernetics as an "actor-oriented, observer-dependent, self-steering, time-variant" paradigm of human systems, was most clearly articulated by Geyer and van der Zouwen in 1978 and 1986. They stated that sociocybernetics is more than just social cybernetics, which could be defined as the application of the general systems approach to social science. Social cybernetics is indeed more than such a one-way knowledge transfer. It implies a feed-back loop from the area of application - the social sciences - to the theory being applied, namely cybernetics; consequently, sociocybernetics can indeed be viewed as part of the new cybernetics: as a result of its application to social science problems, cybernetics, itself, has been changed and has moved from its originally rather mechanistic point of departure to become more actor-oriented and observer-dependent. In summary, the new sociocybernetics is much more subjective and the sociological approach than the classical cybernetics approach with its emphasis on control. The new approach has a distinct emphasis on steering decisions; furthermore, it can be seen as constituting a reconceptualization of many concepts which are often routinely accepted without challenge.

Second order cybernetics

The term "second order cybernetics" is of Heinz von Foerster's own, introduced in hindsight to denote the explicit preoccupation of the new cybernetics with the nature of self-reflexive systems.