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Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory

PUBLISHER Duke University Press (10/30/2009)
PRODUCT TYPE Hardcover (Hardcover)
Description
Emerging in the 1940s, the first cybernetics--the study of communication and control systems--was 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 second-order turn in the 1970s, when the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster catalyzed new thinking about the cognitive implications of self-referential systems. The crucial shift he inspired was from first-order cybernetics' attention to homeostasis as a mode of autonomous self-regulation in mechanical and informatic systems, to second-order concepts of self-organization 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, semi-autonomous entities coupled with their environments and other systems. Second-order 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 Maturana's and Varela's creation of the concept of autopoiesis, Varela's later work on neurophenomenology, and Luhmann's 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, Hans-Georg Moeller, John Protevi, Michael Schiltz, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela, Cary Wolfe

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Product Format
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9780822345817
ISBN-10: 0822345811
Binding: Hardback or Cased Book (Sewn)
Content Language: English
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Page Count: 296
Carton Quantity: 26
Product Dimensions: 6.10 x 0.90 x 9.40 inches
Weight: 0.50 pound(s)
Feature Codes: Bibliography, Index, Table of Contents, Illustrated
Country of Origin: US
Subject Information
BISAC Categories
Computers | Cybernetics
Computers | System Theory
Dewey Decimal: 003.5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009012702
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
jacket back
""Emergence and Embodiment" provides a useful overview and detailed analyses of the complex field of neocybernetics and its major thinkers. It indicates the significance and breadth of interdisciplinary work being done in the wake of Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Heinz von Foerster, and George Spencer-Brown, even as it makes demands on its readers to rethink some of their assumptions about he last forty years of 'theory' in the humanities and the interdisciplinary social sciences."--Robert Markley, author of "Dying Planet: Mars in Science and the Imagination"
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publisher marketing
Emerging in the 1940s, the first cybernetics--the study of communication and control systems--was 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 second-order turn in the 1970s, when the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster catalyzed new thinking about the cognitive implications of self-referential systems. The crucial shift he inspired was from first-order cybernetics' attention to homeostasis as a mode of autonomous self-regulation in mechanical and informatic systems, to second-order concepts of self-organization 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, semi-autonomous entities coupled with their environments and other systems. Second-order 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 Maturana's and Varela's creation of the concept of autopoiesis, Varela's later work on neurophenomenology, and Luhmann's 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, Hans-Georg Moeller, John Protevi, Michael Schiltz, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela, Cary Wolfe

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Editor: Hansen, Mark B. N.
Mark B. N. Hansen is Assistant Professor of English at Princeton University.
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Editor: Clarke, Bruce
Bruce Clarke is Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Interaction of the Arts and Sciences at Texas Tech University. He is the author, most recently, of" Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics. "Linda Dalrymple Henderson is David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor in Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author, most recently, of" Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Early Works."
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Hardcover