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Emergence And Embodiment: New Essays On Secondorder Systems Theory (Science And Cultural Theory),New
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Emerging in the 1940s, the first cyberneticsthe study of communication and control systemswas mainstreamed under the names artificial intelligence and computer science and taken up by the social sciences, the humanities, and the creative arts. In Emergence and Embodiment, Bruce Clarke and Mark B. N. Hansen focus on cybernetic developments that stem from the secondorder turn in the 1970s, when the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster catalyzed new thinking about the cognitive implications of selfreferential systems. The crucial shift he inspired was from firstorder cybernetics attention to homeostasis as a mode of autonomous selfregulation in mechanical and informatic systems, to secondorder concepts of selforganization and autopoiesis in embodied and metabiotic systems. The collection opens with an interview with von Foerster and then traces the lines of neocybernetic thought that have followed from his work.In response to the apparent dissolution of boundaries at work in the contemporary technosciences of emergence, neocybernetics observes that cognitive systems are operationally bounded, semiautonomous entities coupled with their environments and other systems. Secondorder systems theory stresses the recursive complexities of observation, mediation, and communication. Focused on the neocybernetic contributions of von Foerster, Francisco Varela, and Niklas Luhmann, this collection advances theoretical debates about the cultural, philosophical, and literary uses of their ideas. In addition to the interview with von Foerster, Emergence and Embodiment includes essays by Varela and Luhmann. It engages with Humberto Maturanas and Varelas creation of the concept of autopoiesis, Varelas later work on neurophenomenology, and Luhmanns adaptations of autopoiesis to social systems theory. Taken together, these essays illuminate the shared commitments uniting the broader discourse of neocybernetics.Contributors. Linda Brigham, Bruce Clarke, Mark B. N. Hansen, Edgar Landgraf, Ira Livingston, Niklas Luhmann, HansGeorg Moeller, John Protevi, Michael Schiltz, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela, Cary Wolfe
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