A Symposium held during a joint conference of the
American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) and Understanding Complex Systems (UCS)
at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign
May 12-15, 2008
Abstracts
Crayton C. Walker I first review my experience as a research assistant to W. Ross Ashby during the years 1961 to 1965 with particular attention given to the research environment that existed then at BCL. I next discuss the Ashby-influenced complexity theoretic study that formed my doctoral thesis, also carried out at BCL, and comment on its follow-on implications for interpreting management strategy and operationalizing observer perspectives in complex systems. Crayton Walker got a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1965, taught at UCLA, and moved to the University of Connecticut in 1970. Now retired from UConn, his current interests include interpreting Ashby net models in various contexts and modular complexity. [back to overview] [top]
Klaus Krippendorff I plan to review the role W. Ross Ashby played before he came to Urbana, while he was at BCL, and after he went back to England. I will talk on two levels. (a) His vision of cybernetics and how it differed from Wiener’s and Bertalanffy’s general systems theory, his epistemological stance in relation to second-order cybernetics, exemplified by the concept of non-trivial machines, and information theory. (b) My personal experiences with him as a teacher, member of my dissertation committee and mentor. I will heavily rely on my contribution to the conference held on the occasion of Ashby’s 100th anniversary of his birth, organized a couple of years ago at the University of Illinois Urbana and now about to be published. Klaus Krippendorff was a student of W. Ross Ashby and teaches various communication related subjects at the University of Pennsylvania, right now, on the social construction of realities. He is particularly interested in emancipatory epistemology, critical scholarship in the social sciences and human agency, e.g., in cyberspace, and has demonstrated that a more radical formulation of second-order cybernetics opens the door to numerous actionable opportunities. [back to overview] [top] Ranulph Glanville My first experience of the BCL was a presentation to my fellow students in the UK arranged by Gordon Pask, in which Humberto Maturana presented “Autopoiesis” and Heinz von Foerster presented “Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things.” What struck me most about both was the performative nature of the work and of its presentation. Coming from the arts, I became aware that it was possible for an argument to be made in cybernetics in such a manner that the form and the content were matched, as I believe they are in art, rather than in the formulaic manner that traditional scientific writing requires. For me, this was a breakthrough, and brought a new light to understanding both the art and the science of my teacher, Gordon Pask. Ranulph Glanville is a globe trotting, freelance, independent, academic vagrant, a professor of odd jobs. He is vice-president and president-elect of the American Society for Cybernetics. [back to overview] [top]
Karl H. Mueller Karl H. Mueller is the director of WISDOM, the Vienna Institute for Social Documentation and Methodology. He is also President of the Heinz von Foerster Society in Vienna, Austria. With Albert Mueller he conducted a series of interviews with Heinz von Foerster at his home in Pescadero, California. His research interests are second-order cybernetics, complexity theory, and evolutionary designs. [back to overview] [top]
Stuart A. Umpleby In the three tutorials on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I shall describe the history of cybernetics as passing through three stages – engineering cybernetics, biological cybernetics, and social cybernetics. All three were present in the beginning, at the Macy Foundation conferences, and all three continue today. But the emphasis within the American Society for Cybernetics has tended to shift from the first stage (1940s, 1950s, 1960s), to the second stage (1970s and 1980s), to the third stage (1990s and 2000s). The fields of complex systems and cybernetics overlap primarily in their use of the concepts of self-organization and adaptation, although they define the terms somewhat differently. The field of complex systems is defined in part by a strong emphasis on computer simulation (e.g., cellular automata and genetic algorithms) in somewhat the same way that artificial intelligence is defined by programs in Lisp and Prolog and system dynamics is defined by programs in Dynamo. Cybernetics is highly interdisciplinary. The members of the American Society for Cybernetics are biologists, mathematicians, family therapists, management scientists, and philosophers. To the extent that cybernetics emphasizes a method, it would be theoretical and philosophical reflection. Cyberneticians have taken research on neurophysiology and mathematics and asked what the implications are for our understanding of knowledge and of the philosophy of science. Stuart Umpleby is a professor of management at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. As a graduate student in the early 1970s he worked in the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory and the Biological Computer Laboratory. His dissertation used ideas from cybernetics to anticipate the effects of a computer-based communications medium (now called the internet) on society. He is a past president of the American Society for Cybernetics. [back to overview] [top] |