Geyer-Challenge of Sociocybernetics PDF

26/4/2017 Paper prepared for Symposium VI: "Challenges to Sociological Knowledge",
Paper prepared for Symposium VI: "Challenges to Sociological Knowledge",
Session 04: "Challenges from Other Disciplines",
13th World Congress of Sociology, Bielefeld, July 1824, 1994
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS
by
FELIX GEYER
ABSTRACT: THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS
This paper summarizes some of the important concepts and developments in cybernetics and general systems
theory, especially during the last two decades. Its purpose is to show show how they indeed can be a
challenge to sociological thinking. Cybernetics is used here as an umbrella term for a great variety of related
disciplines: general systems theory, information theory, system dynamics, dynamic systems theory, including
catastrophe theory, chaos theory, etc.
A distinction is made between firstorder and secondorder cybernetics. Firstorder cybernetics originated in
the 1940's, exemplified an engineering approach, and was interested in system stability, and thus in feedback
processes in automata and other machines which further equilibrium conditions and make them amenable to
steering efforts. Secondorder cybernetics originated in the 1970s, was based on biological discoveries,
especially in neuroscience, and was interested more in the interaction between observer and observed than in
the observed per se. It has led to a reevaluation of many of the tenets of mainstream philosophy of science,
which was implicitly based on a rather mechanistic and Newtonian clockwork image of the universe,
stressed linear causality, and had a preference for order rather than disorder.
Many of the concepts and procedures of firstorder cybernetics admittedly seem useful for sociology: system
boundaries; the distinction between systems, subsystems and suprasystems; the stress on circular causality;
feedback and feedforward processes; auto and crosscatalysis, etc. However, secondorder cybernetics is
more likely to influence sociological thinking in the future.
This is due, first of all, to its insistence that the interactions between the observer and his subject matter
should be included in the system to be studied, which leads to increased attention for phenomena like self
reference. Second, its basis in biology furthers its predilection for change rather than stability, for
morphogenesis rather than homeostasis, and this may lead to an increasing stress on selforganization, and to
a realistic awareness that sociological phenomena often cannot be forecast, but at best understood. Third, this
is caused by autopoiesis (Greek for selfproduction), the recognition of the fact that all living organisms are
selfsteering within certain limits, and that their behavior therefore can be steered from the outside only to a
very moderate extent. Fourth, this leads to the continuous emergence of new levels of organized complexity
within society, at which new behavior can be demonstrated and new interactions with the environment
become posible.
Finally, attention is devoted to the emerging "science of complexity" including neural networks, artificial
intelligence, artificial life, etc. while the methodological drawbacks of especially secondorder cybernetics
are discussed.
1. Introduction:
The term cybernetics derives from the Greek word for steersman, and could thus roughly be translated as the
art of steering. In the forthcoming half hour, you will hopefully become convinced that the cybernetic
approach can offer some interesting concepts and models to sociology, and may also in that sense have a
steering function. There are two difficulties, however:
ftp://ftp.vub.ac.be/pub/papers/Principia_Cybernetica/Papers_Others/GeyerSocioCybernetics.html 1/21
1) We are comparing two fields which both have a large degree of internal differentiation and fuzzy
boundaries: cybernetics and sociology. Both involve many different approaches, schools of thought,
paradigms, etc. You will all undoubtedly be aware of the many different approaches in sociology. As to
cybernetics, it is used here rather loosely as referring to a set of related approaches: general systems theory,
information theory, catastrophe theory, some forms of modelbuilding by means of simulation, and lately
chaos theory.
2) Over the last few decades, cybernetics and the social sciences have started influencing one another,
although still to a limited extent. We therefore certainly cannot and do not claim that cybernetics as a whole
forms a challenge to sociology as a whole, but do argue that it would be an intellectually stimulating and
profitable experience for many sociologists to get acquainted with some of the more recent developments in
cybernetics.
3) Sociocybernetic studies have generally appeared in cybernetic journals rather than sociological ones,
which may be one of the reasons why up till now cybernetics has had relatively little influence on
mainstream sociology.1) Since the 1960s several social scientists have nevertheless been inspired by
cybernetics and have applied it to the social sciences: Deutsch2) and Easton3) in political science;
Buckley4), and later Baumgartner, Burns and DeVillé5) in sociology and economics, to name but a few.
Nevertheless, and in spite of the above caveats, it seems worth while to reconnoiter what recent
developments in cybernetics could mean for sociology. In sociological theorizing, the focus has slowly
shifted, over the last few decades, from trying to explain the structure and stability of social systems to
analyzing the processes that cause them to change and evolve towards greater levels of complexity, from
trying to help maintain homeostasis in a topdown fashion to explaining morphogenesis as a result of
interpenetrating bottomup processes. Cybernetics has always concentrated on both: the results of input
output transformation processes may be explained by the structure of the system, while that structure can in
turn be conceived as the resultant of previous processes. Recent developments in cybernetics, however, have
increasingly concentrated on the analysis of interacting processes, including even the observers of these
processes, and thus the possibility of a potentially fertile theory transfer should certainly not be excluded.
Within cybernetics, it is customary to distinguish first and secondorder cybernetics, and to prevent
misunderstanding we will keep to this usage, although classical vs. modern cybernetics or first generation
vs. secondgeneration cybernetics might be a preferable terminology. The issue here is that secondorder
cybernetics originated in reaction to what were seen as the deficiencies of firstorder cybernetics, and has the
tendency as often happens to create its own niche by overstressing the differences with firstorder
cybernetics. In order to clarify the differences between the two, we will do the same, with the caveat that
they are largely a matter of relative stress, and that much of what is now known as secondorder cybernetics
was already adhered to by firstorder cyberneticians.
_________________________________________________________
*) The author is especially indebted to Johannes van der Zouwen of the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, who
has commented in great detail on a first draft of this paper, and with whom a paper on a related subject was
recently completed (see ref. 34). Our intensive collaboration over nearly two decades in organizing
sociocybernetics sections at different international cybernetics congresses has resulted in a number of co
edited books, and a certain amount of scientific symbiosis. Responsibility for the contents of the present
paper, however, is all mine. Thanks are also due to Kitty Verrips of SISWO, who commented specifically on
the potential usefulness of secondorder cybernetics for sociological theorizing, and to the members of
SISWO's Working Group on Sociocybernetics where this paper was first presented, especially to discussants
Cor van Dijkum and Loet Leydesdorff.
2. Classical (firstorder) cybernetics:
Firstorder cybernetics originated in the 1940's 6), and indeed tried to steer observerexternal systems.
Although it had an interdisciplinary orientation, it might be called an engineering approach, and focussed on
studying feedback loops and control systems, and on constructing intelligent machines7).
A few examples: Norbert Wiener8), often considered the father of cybernetics, was engaged in automating
the operation of antiaircraft batteries, which led to the construction of ILLIAC, the world's first computer.
Shannon and Weaver9), working at Bell labs in the late 1940s, were confronted with the problem how to
reduce noise in telephone lines, and developed information theory. MIT's Marvin Minsky10) constructed
amongst others M. Speculatrix, a small robot that could find its way out of a dark room, dexterously moving
around objects towards the light; he initiated the now flourishing field of Artificial Intelligence, or AI as it is
known for short.
With its stress on efforts to steer especially technological devices, and developing all kinds of control
systems, it is not amazing that firstorder cybernetics was especially interested in negative feedback loops,
rather than positive ones. When a negative feedback loop either naturally occurs, or is constructed, the
performance or output of a system is compared with a preset goal, and corrective action is taken whenever
there is a deviation from that goal. The thermostat of a central heating system may serve as an example: there
is a feedback loop from the thermostat to the heater, whenever room temperature rises above a certain
maximum, or falls below a certain minimum. It is noteworthy that even in this simple example, although it
clearly is a control system, there is no specific controlling agent; control is dispersed through the system, and
any part of it could be said to control the rest of the system.
As a result of the above, firstorder cybernetics with its engineering approach and the corresponding stress
on constructing control systems, and with its predilection for negative rather than positive feedback
phenomena was interested primarily in homeostasis or equilibriummaintenance, or at least in restoring a
system's equilibrium whenever it was disturbed by external influences impinging on that system. As is still
the case in much of science, environment mastery was an implicit goal, based on the Newtonian conception
of an in principle orderly universe: admittedly complex, but knowable by means of a continuing and
cumulative effort to discover its basic laws. Positive feedback loops, which cause morphogenesis rather than
homeostasis, and are the motor behind change, were paid much less attention to. A simple example of a
positive feedback loop is cumulative interest, or to put it more esoterically: "the devil shits on the big heap",
recently formulated in economics11) as the law of increasing returns.
Early efforts to apply this homeostasisoriented type of cybernetics or systems theory to the field of the
social sciences, as for example those of Parsons12), met with the resistance of a social science community
which by then had turned overwhelmingly liberal, and considered the systems or cybernetic approach to be
not only conservative, but also too simplistic, mechanistic and linear to be really applicable to the world of
human interaction.
Leaving in the middle for the moment to what extent this leftwing or liberal criticism is generally cor
...rect, one can certainly say that some applications of firstorder cybernetics like system dynamics a
simulation procedure originally developed by Forrester and Meadows13) to simulate the behavior of systems
with several feedback loops have made remarkable inroads in the general scientific community. One need
only think of the enormous popularity of the Club of Rome Report, even among laymen14), where systems
modeling was applied to an extremely complicated problem area, with many interacting variables.
The liberal criticism is understandable the stress of firstorder cybernetics was indeed largely, though not
exclusively on constructing mechanical control systems but not quite correct. In the Club of Rome report,
for example, positive feedbacks were certainly important, and the same goes for many other technological
systems: one of the world's perhaps most impressive technological achievements, the atom bomb, would be
unthinkable without positive feedbacks. As Van der Zouwen15) put it succinctly: without negative feedback
loops the organism cannot maintain itself in its environment, and without positive feedback loops it has no
chance to survive as a species in view of environmental changes to which it has to adapt by setting new
goals.
3. The potential usefulness of the classical (firstorder) cybernetic
approach for sociology:
While the concepts and procedures of secondorder cybernetics, to be discussed later, have some specific
advantages for sociology, dealing as they are with the interactions of selforganizing, selfreferential systems,
and thus with the continuous emergence of new levels of complexity, the principles of firstorder cybernetics
can certainly also be fruitfully applied to the field of the social sciences.
3.1 System boundaries:
Cybernetics or systems theory we use these terms interchangeably, as they pertain to virtually the same
fields of inquiry holds that one can mentally and arbitrarily carve out any part of the universe16) and call it
a system. However, once one has thus delineated the boundaries of the system, one should keep to them, at
least for a while. This follows from the socalled black box approach, named after the early metal boxes
containing electrical wiring and circuitry, which were invariably painted black. The black box approach
presupposes that the external observer can never really observe the system from within, but can only
determine what goes in (the input) and what comes out (the output). From the differences between the two,
inferences can then be made about the way the system works, depending of course on the mindset of the
observer.
The way system boundaries are drawn is obviously observerdependent, timedependent and most
importantly also problemdependent. In other words: two observers may be inclined to draw slightly
different boundaries when talking about the same problem; and the same observer may draw the boundaries
of a system to be studied differently tomorrow than today. And finally, even when the boundaries are not
drawn differently as a result of time or observerdependence, they may be drawn in a different way because
a different problem needs to be studied. It is necessary to be fully aware of this when one has to determine
what falls inside and what falls outside one's field of enquiry, and when one has to formulate a research
design.
For example, one can define an individual as a system confined by his or her body. But when one is looking
at that individual from a medical perspective, it may be relevant to include the input: all the food, drugs and
alcohol that have been ingested lately, not to mention the output. When looking at that individual as a
scientist, it may be relevant to include at the very least his word processor, if not the entire support structure
of his institute or department. And when looking at his emotional problems, ...one may have to enlarge the
system by including his family members, as is done in systemsoriented family therapy17). An extreme
example of problemdependence occurred at a cybernetic conference, where the speaker produced a saw,
convinced everyone it was indeed a normal saw, and then started using it quite passably as a fiddle.
Even when a problem has been more or less specified for example the adaptation of ethnic minorities one
still has to decide how wide the system boundaries should be drawn in order to promise the most interesting
research results. One might focus on the interactions between individuals and their environment if one wants
to determine what Sennett18) called "the hidden injuries of class", between families and their environment if
one wants to focus on defensive or adaptive joint strategies, or between the group as a whole and its
environment if one wants to compare the adaptation problems of different ethnic groups.
3.2 Systems, subsystems and suprasystems:
Since one can arbitrarily draw the boundaries of a system when developing a research design, one can not
only decide how one wants to define the system under consideration, bu one is also free to decide how one
wants to define the subsystems i.e., component parts that should be especially looked at and the
suprasystem(s) it forms part of. In the above case, for example, and obviously depending on one's research
goals, one might select the ethnic family as the system under consideration, the family members as the
subsystems, and the ethnic minority group and the nation in which it lives as the suprasystems. One
obviously needs to be extremely careful how one defines such a hierarchically nested set of systems, as this
will determine the kind of research results one will obtain.
3.3 Circular causality:
Many of us have still been educated to consider circular reasoning as being wrong: a mistake known in logic
as the "circulus vitiosus". Something cannot cause itself; but cybernetics says it indeed can. One of the
important contributions of firstorder cybernetics has been to increase the awareness of ubiquitous circular
processes, in technology, in nature, and in society. The circular causal cycle may be short like A causes B
and B causes A or it may be long and cycle through the entire alfabet or more, in which case it will be
harder to discover.
It may be interesting to speculate on what has caused the narrowing of this circular model of causal thinking
during the cumulative buildup of the NewtonianLaplacean world image, with its clockwork model of the
universe, its mechanistic rather than organic bias, and its stress on linear causal chains unfolding through
time, from past to future19). This resistance against circular causality may itself be part of a circular process
where every success of the developing natural sciences since the 17th century strengthened the conviction
that hard work could lay bare the implicit rules, the hidden clockwork, of the universe, which in turn
attracted new scientists to engage in this prestigious area, whose research results then further strengthen the
Newtonian image of the world.
For whatever reason, much of empirical sociology still follows the linear model: admittedly, multivariate
analysis may demonstrate that a phenomenon has many different causes, and many different consequences,
but this is still a far cry from concentrating on finding circular causal chains, whereby the phenomenon in
question helps to create itself. It barely needs comment, of course, that such a concentration on unraveling
circular causal chains would enormously complicate empirical research. The idea of circular causality has a
certain intuitive attractiveness, and a logical one as well, but to prove its existence empirically is quite
another matter.
3.4 Positive and negative feedback loops:
Both positive and negative feedback loops are examples of circular causality. They can either occur
spontaneously, in nature as well as in society, or they can be engineered. As was mentioned before, negative
feedback loops are of special interest to firstorder cybernetics, since its purpose generally was to steer
systems by keeping them on a certain course, rather than have them change direction, i.e., to let them
fluctuate within a specified margin around an equilibrium. However, positive feedback loops were certainly
already recognized in the engineering efforts of firstorder cybernetics, but it was the originally biology
based secondorder cybernetics that gave them special attention. Logically so, as they cause change rather
than stability.
As an aside, it should be noted here that Magoroh Marayama20) spoke already in 1963 of the "second
cybernetics" (not: secondorder cybernetics), thus designating the cybernetics which concentrates on
deviationamplifying mutual causal systems, where positive rather than negative feedback, and
morphogenesis rather than morphostasis are at issue.
Often, negative feedback loops will spontaneously emerge in human interaction when that interaction
continues over a certain period of time. A famous example is formed by the wellknown prisoner's dilemma
which, when played over several cycles, changes from a nonzerosum game to a zerosum one: at first, both
prisoners tend to betray one another to maximize their own profit. Rapoport21) discovered that both partners
start empathizing with the other's position after a while, and then both converge to what he calls a titfortat
strategy: an honest move will be rewarded by an honest countermove, and a dishonest one will be punished
by a dishonest countermove.
3.5 Simulation:
While a technique rather than a concept, one can certainly say that simulation, originally a technique of first
order cybernetics, is widely used now also in secondorder cybernetics to study phenomena of emergence,
and has become a muchused tool in the social sciences as well as in most other disciplines. With the
increasing mass scale availability of highspeed computing equipment, even on PC's, it becomes possible to
realistically simulate ever more complex problems, with the possibility to incorporate an increasing number
of interacting variables in one's models. The obvious advantage of such simulations is that one can
investigate the effects of changing some of the variables without actually changing them in reality, i.e.,
without engaging in policy action. Also, simulations with complex models allow one to discover latent
consequences of certain intended actions, and to forecast the emergence and the effects of counterintuitive
behavior.
4. Modern (secondorder) cybernetics:
Secondorder cybernetics originated some thirty years later than firstorder cybernetics, in the early 1970s.
The term was coined by Heinz von Foerster22) in a paper for the 1970 meeting of the American Society for
Cybernetics, entitled "Cybernetics of cybernetics". He defined firstorder cybernetics as the cybernetics of
observed systems, and secondorder cybernetics as the cybernetics of observing systems.
Indeed, one of the main differences with firstorder cybernetics is that secondorder cybernetics explicitly
includes the observer(s) in the systems to be studied. Moreover, it generally deals with living systems, and
not with developing control systems for inanimate technological devices. These living systems range from
simple cells all the way up the evolutionary scale to human beings; while the observers themselves are
obviously also human beings. Thus, in contrast to the engineering approach of firstorder cybernetics, most
of secondorder cybernetics could be said to have a mainly biological approach, or at the very least a
biological basis. As Umpleby23) states, this difference has important consequences:
1) Living systems, no matter how primitive, have a "will" of their own. They exhibit what Maturana and
Varela have termed autopoiesis or selfproduction: they not only reproduce, but also produce their own
"spare parts" whenever necessary, generally utilizing elements from their environment. Living systems thus
are organizationally closed, but informationally open.
2) As a result, living systems are inherently more difficult to steer; their interactions with their environment
are more difficult if not impossible to forecast more than a few moves ahead. Thus, secondorder cybernetics
has become realistic about the possibilities for steering, and has concentrated more on understanding the
evolution of biological and social complexity than on controlling it.
3) Given this, it is understandable that secondorder cybernetics is more interested in morphogenesis and
positive feedback loops, than in homeostasis and negative feedback loops.
4) Although firstorder cybernetics certainly included important biologists like Von Bertalanffy24), one of
the founders of General System Theory the impetus for secondorder cybernetics came largely from
biology and neurophysiology, and in a later stage also from epistemology. This is not to say that biology does
not profitably use firstorder cybernetic concepts: homeostasis, for example, remains an important concept in
biology to explain different processes like hormonal balance, maintenance of temperature, etc. However,
many biological phenomena that have to do with growth, change and emergence demand an explanation in
terms of secondorder cybernetics. Maturana, for example, considers knowledge to be a biological
phenomenon.25) Attention was thus focused on the observer, and the biological basis of perception and
knowledge acquisition processes. In epistemology, secondorder cyberneticians became interested in the
nature of knowledge, language, cognition and communication.
5) It was thus logical that the concept of selfreference was developed and stressed, especially biological and
linguistic selfreference, A satisfying theory of biology should account for the existence of theories of
biology; likewise, an adequate theory of cognition should give an understanding of understanding. The view
of language changed from language as a string of symbols representing external "reality" to language as
actions for coordinating actions. Umpleby16) gives the example of "performative utterances" like "I now
pronounce you husband and wife", where the social status of two people is tranformed, while this
transformation is described at the same time.
6) Summing up: in secondorder cybernetics, the system whether an individual or a group is defined as
having the ability to reflect on its own operations on the environment, and even on itself. These operations
generate variety in the environment, or in itself, which can reflexively be recognized as being due to
systemic variation, which makes them recursive: observations can be observed, communications can be
communicated, etc.
Apart from von Foerster, several other authors haven given concise definitions of the differences between
firstorder and secondorder cybernetics. These differences refer to, respectively, the purpose of a model vs.
the purpose of the modeler (Pask), controlled systems vs. autonomous systems (Varela), the interaction
among variables in a system vs. interaction between the observer and the system observed (Umpleby), and
theories of social systems vs. theories of the interaction between ideas and society (Umpleby). The latter
difference seems to reflect the respective approaches of Parsons as a firstorder systems theorist interested in
system stability and system maintenance, and Luhmann as a secondorder cybernetician interested more in
change and morphogenesis.
4.1 Secondorder cybernetics and the philosophy of science:
While secondorder cybernetics agrees with many of the tenets of the mainstream Newtonian philosophy of
science like the need to distinguish science fom nonscience, e.g., by means of Popper's falsifiability
criterion, the principle of verification through experimentation, the procedure of refuting conjectures by trial
and error, etc. it goes against it in some important respects:26)
1) It disagrees with the idea that observations are independent of the characteristics of the observer. Von
Glasersfeld27) developed the philosophy of constructivism as an alternative to the realism of mainstream
philosophy of science, i.e., the idea that every individual constructs his or her own reality to fit personal
experience28). The knowledge built up this way fits, but does not match the world of experience. It is
considered an advantage of this approach that it supposedly increases tolerance, by leading to what De Bono
29) prefers to call "prototruth", with all the relativistic implications this entails, rather than truth in any
absolute sense. Perhaps the best illustration of such an inbuilt sense of relativity is presented in the Mel
Brooks movie "History of the World", where Moses comes down Mt. Sinai carrying three topheavy tablets
with the fifteen Commandments, stumbles and drops the last tablet to smithereens, then relaxes, shrugs, and
says: "Well, ten left".
2) In classical philosophy of science, theories do not affect the phenomena they describe; it would be
preposterous to assume that the Second Law of Thermodynamics would speed up the decay of the universe.
But in secondorder cybernetics, interaction between social theories and social systems is taken for
granted30). Economic theories do change economic systems, and often entire societies, as any East
European in the audience can testify. And they are often developed precisely because the theorists do want to
change social systems.
3) A core point of disagreement, however, at least with some extreme proponents of secondorder
cybernetics, is that they reject the necessity, claimed amongst others by Popper, of the unity of method. The
methods used for the physical sciences cannot be used for the biological and social sciences, if only because
they are selforganizing, selfreferential and autopoietic. However, mainstream secondorder cyberneticians
have a more moderate viewpoint, i.e., that there is at least some unity of method across the sciences.
Clearly, secondorder cybernetics strongly disagrees with the still neopositivist, Newtonian mainstream
philosophy of science in the abovementioned respects31), although this disagreement is certainly not the
prerogative of secondorder cybernetics: Norbert Wiener, for example, devoted a fascinating chapter32) to
the difference between Newtonian and Bergsonian time. The changes suggested by secondorder cybernetics
amount to a scientific revolution in Kuhnian terms; but, as Umpleby33) suggests, the time has come perhaps
to return to a period of normal science. The way to do this is by stressing the correspondence principle: i.e.
the new theory, secondorder cybernetics, should reduce to the old theory, the mainstream philosophy of
science, to which it corresponds for those cases in which the old theory is known to hold. In other words, a
new and previously neglected dimension is added.
5. The usefulness of secondorder cybernetic concepts for sociology
Before dealing with some of the main concepts of secondorder cybernetics selforganization, self
reference, selfsteering, autocatalysis, and autopoiesis it is interesting to note that Norbert Wiener, the
father of cybernetics, was quite ambivalent himself on the applicability of cybernetics to the social sciences
and to society.34) On the one hand, Wiener was thoroughly convinced that the behavior of humans, animals
and machines could be explained by making use of the same cybernetic principles: communication, control
of entropy through learning by means of feedback, etc. This is evident already from the titles of his two best
known books: "The Human Use of Human Beings" 35) and "Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in
the Animal and the Machine"36). On the other hand, Wiener was quite pessimistic about the applicability of
cybernetics to social systems, and this for at least two reasons.
1) Social science data usually exemplify short statistical time series, affected by varying environmental
conditions, while one would ideally need long runs under invariant conditions.
2) Wiener moreover considered the social sciences as the discipline where the coupling between .observer
and observed is hardest to minimize in both directions: apart from the obvious disadvantages of observer
dependence, the researcher also inevitably influences the subjects of his research, and can sometimes even
act as a catalyst in processes of sudden change: how many strikes have not broken out just after the
researchers measuring job satisfaction left the premises?
In a sense, one might say these two objections are interrelated: to the extent that the observer tends to
influence his subjects more than in the natural sciences, he thereby contributes to a disruption of the
constancy of the conditions needed for longer statistical time series.37) This is of course not to deny that
many examples can be found of the inverse: content analysis or nonparticipant observation does not
influence the subjects of the research, while bombarding protons or vivisection clearly does.
The difference between first and secondorder cybernetics was described before, but it should be clear
already from the main concepts: while the concepts of firstorder cybernetics do not point specifically to
either the system or its environment, the important concepts of secondorder cybernetics all start with "self",
if not in English, then in Greek ("autopoiesis"). While it may be interesting to speculate about the extent to
which this "selfishness" is related to the increasingly rapid social change taking place since the late 1960s,
this would fall outside the bounds of this paper.
5.1 Selforganization
Due to the increasing complexity of today's world, and the seeming intractability of many of its problems,
contemporary scientific interest in many disciplines has centered on the emergent, selforganizing properties
of certain complex aggregates. Especially developments in biology in this respect have stimulated second
order cybernetics, although firstorder cybernetics was certainly also aware of selforganizing systems, but
did not pursue this line of inquiry. Norbert Wiener, for example, mentions the synchronization of the
behavior of fireflies38), while Ashby also stressed selforganization in his "Design for a Brain" 39).
Recent developments in cognitive science demonstrate the emergence of selforganization (itself a matter of
emergence) as a core concept. Cognitive science can be viewed as the result of an interdisciplinary effort
which includes neuroscience, AI, linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive psychology. Though it is barely three
decades old, one can already distinguish two schools: cognitivism and connectionism.
Cognitivism and cognitive technology gave the impetus for the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
Cognitivism conceived mind as a manipulation according to the rules of deductive logic, as localized and
serial information processing of symbols which were supposed to represent an external reality.40) In this
respect, it seems to be close to firstorder cybernetics, although during the Macy conferences of the late
fourties41) it was already hypothesized that brains have no central logical processor, and no firm rules or
specific spots to store information, but rather operate on the principle of distributed intelligence.
In spite of this, cognitivism was the mainstream paradigm in cognitive science until well into the 1970s,
when its drawbacks became more apparent:42)
At some stage, symbolic information processing encounters the socalled "Von Neumann bottleneck": it is
based on rules that are sequentially applied, which obviously gives problems with large numbers of
sequential operations, as in weather forecasting or image analysis.
Moreover, symbolic information processing is localized, rather than distributed, and local malfunctioning
of some of the symbols or rules therefore tends to result in overall malfunctioning, without the resilience
towards disturbances which distributed processing offers.
Connectionism, in clear contradistinction to cognitivism, incorporates many of the views of secondorder
cybernetics. It is explicitly bottomup rather than topdown: it eschews abstract symbolic descriptions, but
assumes simple, "stupid", neuronlike components that develop cognitive capacities when appropriately
connected. In other words: the intelligence is in the structure, in the connections made hence the name
connectionism and not in the components. Thus, it stresses emergence and selforganization.
Hebb's rule, formulated in 1949, occupies a central place in connectionism. It states that learning is based on
postulated changes in the brain as a result of correlated activity between neurons. If two neurons tend to be
active together, their connection is strengthened; if not, then it is weakened. In this way history, which is
always a history of transformations, is incorporated. Simulations of a simple network of neurons according to
Hebb's rule demonstrate that pattern recognition is possible, after a learning phase in which some of the
connections are strengthened or weakened, when the number of patterns presented is no more than about
15% of the participating neurons.43)
The components of neural networks do not need an external processing unit which guides their operations;
they work locally according to local rules, but since they are part of a network, global cooperation emerges
when the states of all participating neurons reach a mutually satisfactory state. This passage from local rules
to global coherence is the essence of selforganization otherwise also denoted as emergent or global
properties, network dynamics, nonlinear networks, complex systems, etc. Once one cares to look for it,
emergence abounds. In different domains, like vortices and lasers, chemical oscillations, genetic networks,
population genetics, immune networks ecology and geophysics, selforganizing networks give rise to new
properties.
Varela describes simulation experiments with extremely simple cellular automata, whose components are
arranged in a circle, can only have only two states ( 0 or 1), and change their states according to simple rules
(i.e. the states of their two neighbouring components). These experiments have demonstrated that they can be
divided into four classes or attractors:
in simple attractors all components end up either being all active (1) or being all inactive (0);
in somewhat more complex cyclical attractors spatial periodicities emerge: some components remain
active, while others do not;
a third type of attractor, also cyclical, runs through at least two cycles before returning to the same state;
finally, for a few rules the resulting dynamics give rise to the chaotic attractors, studied especially in chaos
theory, where one cannot detect any regularities either in space or time, although such systems may
unexpectedly return to perfect order, as has been Prigogine's point of departure in this theory of complexity.
When these simple cellular automata are structurally coupled to an external world, for example by dropping
them in a simulated "primal soup" of 0s and 1s, with the rule that each component takes over the state of the
environmental element it encounters, then nothing happens with the first and fourth class of attractors: they
go back to their homogeneous state, respectively remain in their chaotic state. The cyclical attractors,
however, demonstrate an admittedly primitive kind of intelligent behavior, for which they were definitely not
programmed: for example, some types react ony to double perturbations from the environment; others, the
socalled oddsequence recognizers only to an uneven number of perturbations.
These experiments show that a simple system with a form of closure (the network's internal dynamical
emergences), which is structurally coupled to an environment (replacement of each component by the state
of the element it encounters) selects (or enacts) a domain of distinctions from a world of randomness which
is relevant to its structure. On the basis of its autonomy the system selects or enacts .a domain of
significance, which involves some minimal interpretation. While admittedly a far cry from
describing anything like human intelligence, these experiments present a minimal example of how
autonomous systems can draw significance from a random background, which may not be totally unlike the
way humans draw significance from an after all neutral universe: i.e., by being autonomous, or having
operational closure, and by being structurally coupled.
The implications of these developments in cognitive science for sociology are potentially interesting because
of the possible analogies that may exist with the many cases of selforganization in human societies:
1) autonomous systems, though in this case simulated on a computer whose coupling with the environment is
specified by inputoutput relations, and thus by an outside source, give meaning to their interactions on the
basis of their own history, rather than on the basis of the intentions of the programmer or should one say a
manipulating environment?
2) neural networks, and possibly other networks like human networks as well, produce emergent phenomena
as a result of both simultaneous processes (the emergent pattern itself arises as a whole) and sequential ones
(participating components have to engage in backandforth activity to produce the pattern.44)
5.2 Selfreference
The phenomenon of selfreference is assumed to be typical of human beings, both on the individual and the
group level, although recent work with apes seems to open up the possibility that they too may have some
degree of selfreference. Nevertheless, selfreference at least in the sense used here is not a concept in
firstorder cybernetics, which as Norbert Wiener so explicitly stressed concerns itself with the
commonalities between man, animals and machines, rather than with the differences between them.
Three meanings of selfreference may be distinguished in this respect:
1) the "neutral" meaning, which is used also and especially in firstorder cybernetics, and is also applicable
to nonbiological systems, where "selfreferencing control" indicates that any changes in the state of a system
are dependent upon the state of that system at a previous moment, like birth rate being dependent upon
population size;
2) the "biological" meaning, where senses and a memory are the minimum requirements, and where a self
referential system can be defined as a system that contains information and knowledge about itself, that is, its
own state, structure, and processes; like, e.g., human beings45);
3) the "stronger" secondorder cybernetics meaning used here, where the system whether an individual or a
social system collects information about its own functioning, which in turn can influence that functioning;
minimal requirements in this case are selfobservation, selfreflection and some degree of freedom of action.
One of the main characteristics of social systems, distinguishing it from many other systems, is indeed their
potential for selfreferentiality in the latter sense. This means not only that the knowledge accumulated by
the system about itself in turn affects both the structure and the operation of that system, but it also implies
that in selfreferential systems like social systems, feedback loops exist between parts of external reality on
the one hand, and models and theories about these parts of reality on the other hand.
Concretely, whenever social scientists systematically accumulate new knowledge about the structure and
functions of their society, or about subgroups within that society, and when they subsequently make that
knowledge known, through their publications or sometimes even through the mass media in principle also
to those to whom that knowledge pertains the consequence often is that such knowledge will be invalidated,
because the research subjects may react to this knowledge in such a way that the analyses or forecasts made
by the social scientists are falsified. In this respect, social systems are different from many other systems,
including (most?) biological ones. There is a clearly twosided relationship between selfknowledge of the
system on the one hand, and the behavior and structure of that system on the other hand.
Biological systems, like social systems, admittedly do show goaloriented behavior of actors, self
organization, selfreproduction, adaptation and learning. But it is only psychological and social systems that
arrive systematically, by means of experiment and reflection, at knowledge about their own structure and
operating procedures, with the obvious aim to improve these. This holds true on the microlevel of the
individual, as in psychoanalysis or other selfreferential activities, and on the macrolevel of world society, as
in planning international trade or optimal distribution of available resources.
For social scientists, the consequences of selfreferentiality are interesting not only for gaining an insight in
the functioning of social systems, but also for the methodology and epistemology used to study them. There
is a paradox here: the accumulation of knowledge often leads to a utilization of that knowledge both by the
social scientists and the objects of their research which may change the validity of that knowledge.46), 47)
The usual examples of selfreferential behavior in social science consist of selffulfilling and selfdefeating
prophecies. Henshel46), for example, has studied serial selffulfilling prophecies, where the accuracy of
earlier predictions, themselves influenced by the selffulfilling mechanism, impacts upon the accuracy of the
subsequent predictions. In much of empirical social science research, however, selfreferential behavior does
not loom large which is rather amazing in view of its supposedly being an essential characteristic of
individual human functioning. However, if one does not see UFO's, this neither means they are not there, nor
that one is blind. In this case the research methodology used may be an issue: survey research, where people
are asked what they think or feel, offers little opportunity to bring out selfreferential behavior, while depth
interviews, which concentrate more on the "why" than the "what" of people's opinions have a better chance
to elicit selfreferential remarks in this respect.
5.3 Selfsteering
The futility of largescale and detailed planning efforts has led to the increasing realization that both
individuals and organizations are to a large extent selfsteering. After all, perfect planning would imply
perfect knowledge of the future, which in turn would imply a totally deterministic universe in which
planning would not make any difference. While recognizing the usefulness of efforts to steer societies, a
costbenefit analysis, especially in the case of intensive steering efforts, will often turn out to be negative:
intensive steering implies intensive social change, i.e. a long and uncertaintyincreasing time period over
which such change takes place, and also an increased chance for changing planning preferences and for
conflicts between different emerging planning paradigms during such a period. Nevertheless, given a few
human cognitive predispositions, there unfortunately seems to exist a bias for oversteering rather than
understeering.48)
A historical overview of planning efforts concludes that, in spite of intensified theorizing and energetic
attempts to create a thoroughly planned society during the last two centuries the different answers given so
far regarding the possibility of planning cancel each other out. There is even no consensus about a formal
definition, though usually planning is seen as more comprehensive, detailed, direct, imperative or expedient
when compared with other steering activities that are not defined as planning. Increased knowledge about
human (i.e. selfreferential) systems often does not help us to improve our planning of such
systems.Aulin49) tried to answer two basic questions in this respect:
1) Should one opt for the "katascopic" or the "anascopic" view of society; in other words, should the
behavior of individuals and groups be planned from the top down, in order for a society to survive in the long
run, or should the insight of actors at every level, including the bottom one, be increased and therewith their
competence to handle their environment more effectively and engage more succesfully in goalseeking
behavior?
2) What should be the role of science, especially the social sciences, in view of the above choice: should it
try mainly to deliver useful knowledge for an improved steering of the behavior of social systems and
individuals, or should it strive to improve the competence of actors at grass roots level, so that these actors
can steer themselves and their own environment with better results?
To answer these questions, Aulin followed a cybernetic line of reasoning that argues for nonhierarchical
forms of steering. Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety indeed implies a Law of Requisite Hierarchy in the case
where only the survival of the system is considered, i.e. if the regulatory ability of the regulators is assumed
to remain constant. However, the need for hierarchy decreases if this regulatory ability itself improves
which is indeed the case in advanced industrial societies, with their welldeveloped productive forces and
correspondingly advanced distribution apparatus (the market mechanism). Since human societies are not
simply selfregulating systems, but selfsteering systems aiming at an enlargement of their domain of self
steering, there is a possibility nowadays, at least in sufficiently advanced industrial societies, for a
coexistence of societal governability with ever less control, centralized plannning and concentration of
power.
As the recent breakdown of the Soviet Union and its gigantic planning apparatus demonstrates, this is not
only a possibility, but even a necessity: when moving from a workdominated society to an information
dominated one, less centralized planning is a prerequisite for the very simple reason that the intellectual
processes dealing with information are selfsteering and not only selfregulating and consequently cannot
be steered from the outside by definition. In other words: there should be no excessive topdown planning,
and science should help individuals in their selfsteering efforts, and certainly should not get involved in the
maintenance of hierarchical power systems.
Of course, this is not to deny that there is a type of system within a society that can indeed be planned,
governed and steered, but this is mainly because such systems have been designed to be of this type in the
first place, i.e. to exemplify the concept of the control paradigm of firstorder cybernetics although even in
firstorder cybernetics control does not necessarily imply hierarchy, as even the simple case of the thermostat
mentioned before demonstrates. After all, in most developed countries, and even in many underdeveloped
ones, the railways run on time, in spite of selfsteering employees being involved. Most armies, though also
replete with selfsteering individuals, are still based on strict hierarchical control and nevertheless function
reasonably well, although it has to be admitted that modern, technologically sophisticated and information
driven armies50) seem to thrive more on bottomup initiative, while armies that explicitly incorporate such
selfsteering principles and bottomup initiative in their training like the Israel Defense Forces are among
the most successful. Thus, while there certainly still is a limited place for organizations that exemplify a
more or less hierarchical control paradigm, modern, complex multigroup society in its entirety,
conceptualized as a matrix in which such systems grow and thrive, can never be of this type.
If one investigates a certain system with a research methodology based on the control paradigm, the results
are necessarily of a conservative nature; changes of the system as such are almost prevented by definition.
According to De Zeeuw,51) a different methodological paradigm is needed if one wants to support social
change of a fundamental nature and wants to prevent "postsolution" problems; such a paradigm is based on
a multipleactor design, does not strive towards isolation of the phenomena .to be studied, and likewise does
not demand a separation between a valuedependent and a valueindependent part of the research outcomes.
5.4 Autocatalysis and crosscatalysis
Laszlo52) describes two varieties of (chemical) catalytic cycles: autocatalytic cycles, in which the product of
a reaction catalyzes its own synthesis, and crosscatalytic cycles, where two different products or groups of
products catalyze each other's synthesis. An example of a model of a crosscatalytic cycle, developed by
Prigogine and colleagues, is the Brusselator:
(1) A > X
(2) B + X > Y + D
(3) 2X + Y > 3X
(4) X > E
With X and Y as intermediate molecules, there is an overall sequence in which A and B become D and E.
Step 3 can be seen as autocatalysis, while steps 2 and 3 in combination describe crosscatalysis.
Autocatalytic sets (A > B > C > ...... > Z > A) bootstrap their own evolution, provided the complexity of
interactions is rich enough; the system then changes from a subcritical to a supercritical state, and
autocatalysis follows. Kaufmann53) even uses the concept to explain the origins of life from a "primal soup"
of simple chemical elements as an inevitable production of order, rather than as a unique and extremely
unlikely historical accident. Simple chemical laws coupled with the presence of a sufficient number of
frequently interacting elements produce ever more complex elements, with new characteristics, that often
turn out to be part of new catalytic processes at higher levels of molecular complexity processes which in
turn boost the emergence of still higher levels of complexity. Along similar lines, Swenson54) likewise
maintains that in spite of the Second Law of Thermodynamics "the world is in the order production
business".
The economist Arthur55), collaborating closely with Kaufmann at the Sante Fe Institute, applied the concept
of autocatalytic sets to the economy: the economy too bootstraps its own evolution, as it grows more
complex over time. Beyond a certain critical threshold, phase transitions occur; stagnant developing
countries can enter the takeoff stage when their economy has diversified sufficiently. Increased trade
between two countries in a subcritical state can similarly produce a more complex and interwoven economy
which becomes supercritical and explodes outward. Catalytic effects might also operate in phase transitions
that are considered negative, where critical thresholds of violence are passed as in Northern Ireland or
Bosnia.
5.5 Autopoiesis
Autopoiesis, or "selfproduction", is a concept introduced in the 1970s by the biologists Maturana and
Varela,56) with the aim to differentiate the living from the nonliving. An autopoietic system was defined as
a network of interrelated componentproducing processes such that the components in interaction generate
the same network that produced them.
Although Maturana and Varela considered the concept applicable only in biology, and not in the social
sciences, an interesting "theory transfer" was made by Luhmann.57) He defended the quite novel thesis here
that, while social systems are selforganizing and selfreproducing systems, they do not consist of individuals
or roles or even acts, as commonly conceptualized, but of communications. It should not be forgotten that the
concept of autopoiesis was developed while studying living systems. When one tries to generalize the usages
of this concept to make it also truly applicable to social systems, the biologybased theory of autopoiesis
should therefore be expanded into a more general theory of selfrefe .rential autopoietic systems. It should
be realized that social and psychic systems are based upon another type of autopoietic organization than
living systems: namely on communication and consciousness, respectively, as modes of meaningbased
reproduction.
While communications rather than actions are thus viewed as the elementary unit of social systems, the
concept of action admittedly remains necessary to ascribe certain communications to certain actors. The
chain of communications can thus be viewed as a chain of actions which enables social systems to
communicate about their own communications and to choose their new communications, i.e. to be active in
an autopoietic way. Such a general theory of autopoiesis has important consequences for the epistemology of
the social sciences: it draws a clear distinction between autopoiesis and observation, but also acknowledges
that observing systems are themselves autopoietic systems, subject to the same conditions of autopoietic self
reproduction as the systems they are studying.
The theory of autopoiesis thus belongs to the class of global theories, i.e. theories that point to a collection of
objects to which they themselves belong. Classical logic cannot really deal with this problem, and it will
therefore be the task of a new systemsoriented epistemology to develop and combine two fundamental
distinctions: between autopoiesis and observation, and between external and internal (self)observation.
Classical epistemology searches for the conditions under which external observers arrive at the same results,
and does not deal with selfobservation. Consequently, societies cannot be viewed, in this perspective, as
either observing or observable. Within a society, all observations are by definition selfobservations.
One of the first efforts to apply the concepts of both autopoiesis and autocatalysis to the social sciences was
made by Gierer.58) He demonstrated "empirically" by computer simulation that inequality can be
explained as resulting from the cumulative interaction over time of the autocatalytic, selfenhancing effects
of certain initial advantages (e.g. generalized wealth, including education) with depletion of scarce resources.
It then turns out that striking inequalities can be generated from nearly equal initial distributions, where
slight initial advantages tend to be selfperpetuating within the boundary conditions of depleting resources.
6. The science of complexity: a convergence of paradigms
Since complex modern societies as compared to simpler ones are highly dynamic and interactive, and thus
change at accelerated rates, they are generally in a farfromequilibrium situation. According to Prigogine
and Stengers59) who distinguish systems in equilibrium, systems fluctuating near equilibrium through
feedback, and systems far from equilibrium nonlinear relationships obtain in systems that are far from
equilibrium, where relatively small inputs can trigger massive consequences. At such "revolutionary
moments" or bifurcation points, chance influences, but does not take over from determinism and the
direction of change is inherently impossible to predict: a desintegration into chaos, or a "spontaneous" leap to
a higher level of order or organization a socalled "dissipative structure", because it requires more energy to
sustain it, compared with the simpler structure it replaces.
In stressing this possibility for selforganization, for "order out of chaos", Prigogine comes close to the
concept of autopoiesis. In modern societies, the mechanistic and deterministic Newtonian world view
emphasizing stability, order, uniformity, equilibrium, and linear relationships between or within closed
systems is being replaced by a new paradigm. This new paradigm is more in line with today's accelerated
social change, and stresses disorder, instability, diversity, disequilibrium, nonlinear relationships between
open systems, morphogenesis and temporality. Prigogine indeed calls it the science of complexity.60) It is
exemplified amongst others by Prigogine himself, Maturana and Varela,47) Laszlo,43) and "secondorder
cybernetics" in general: i.e. the (nonmechanistic) study of open systems in interaction with their observers.
Social scientists, often still thinking in terms of linear causality, would be welladvised to really study
Prigogine's theoretical approach and try out the explanatory powers of his conceptual vocabulary
fluctuations, feedback amplification, disssipative structures, bifurcations, (ir)reversibility, autoand cross
catalysis, selforganization, etc. on the phenomena they study. This holds true as well for the concepts and
methods of secondorder cybernetics in general, as discussed in the foregoing. However, it is already quite
difficult to apply firstorder cybernetics which also fully recognizes nonlinearities to social science data
sets, and it may seem virtually impossible to do the same with secondorder cybernetics; we will come back
later on the reasons why this is the case. But indeed, secondorder cybernetics is a paradigm that does more
justice to the constantly emerging novel complexities of ongoing human interaction, and does not postulate
simplistic assumptions about the constancy of human behavior.
What name one gives to this paradigm, or rather this convergence of paradigms over the last two decades, is
a matter of secondary importance. What is reassuring in this novel and therefore risky field of research is that
there seems to be indeed a convergence of paradigms: all the blind men seem to have their hands on the same
elephant. We have generally called this field here secondorder cybernetics; but it might also be designated
by other names like cognitive science, general systems theory, artificial intelligence, artificial life, or perhaps
indeed most aptly the science of complexity. Its main points should be clear by now:
1) Complexity is in the software, not in the hardware; it is in the structure rather than in the elements making
up the structure, in the way simple building blocks are organized as a result of simple laws, and not in the
building blocks themselves.
2) The emergence of complexity is a bottomup process, without any central controller leading it, rather than
a topdown one; it is a matter of local units, acting according to local laws, producing new levels of
complexity by interacting.
The interesting new field of AI (Artifical Life)61) demonstrates these points by means of computer
simulation. The flocking behavior of birds, for example, has been simulated with amazing accuracy by
computer "boids" following three simple rules: 1) maintain minimum distance from other "boids", 2) match
velocities with other boids, 3) move towards the center of the mass of birds.
Artificial life is the opposite of conventional biology: it tries to understand life by means of synthesis rather
than analysis. It assumes, as stated above, that life is not a property of matter, but of organization of matter.
Living systems are viewed as machines, with one difference from other machines: that they are constructed
from the bottom up. Complex behavior does not need to have complex roots. On the contrary, topdown
systems are forever running into combinations of events they do not know how to handle. Lindenmayer62)
simulated leafs of totally different plants by only slightly changing the bottomup rules for their construction.
There is no ghost in the machine: a population of simple elements following equally simple rules of
interaction can behave in always surprising ways. The AL people are convinced that life is not like a
computation, but that it is a computation.
3) What can easily be demonstrated in computer simulations of neural networks goes for human networks as
well: the more densely they are interconnected, the less likely they are to cycle through a limited number of
states, or to ever repeat the same state. The more interdependence grows, the less likely it becomes that
history will ever repeat itself, and can therefore be more or less forecasted on the basis of previous
experience.
Growing interdependence implies increasing communication. As Leydesdorff63) has stated,
"Communication systems change by communicating information to related communication systems; co
variation among systems, if repeated over time, can lead to coevolution (rather than evolution per se).
Conditions for stabilization of higherorder systems are specifiable: segmentation, stratification,
differentiation, reflection, and selforganization can be distinguished in terms of developmental stages of
increasingly complex networks."
Departing from Luhmann's conception of society as consisting of communications, rather than actions of
participating actors, and commenting on Giddens's structuration theory, Leydesdorff64) cogently argues that
the mutually conditioning relationship between structure and action can best be empirically studied by using
the model of parallel distributed processing as employed in Artificial Intelligence. "The network networks,
and the actor acts", i.e., the network performs its own selfreferential loops, independent of the specific
actors involved.
4) It should be clear by now that we have not been talking merely about complex systems in isolation which
probably do not even exist but about complex adaptive systems, interacting with an environment. They are
everywhere one cares to look: brains, immune systems, ecologies, cells, developing embryos, but also
sociocultural systems like political parties, economic systems, and even scientific communities. Holland,65)
who was one of the first to simulate neuronal networks in 1951, mentions the following characteristics:66)
1) They have many agents acting in parallel, and their control is highly dispersed, with any coherent behavior
resulting from competition and cooperation amoong the agents themselves.
2) They have many levels of organization, with agents at one level serving as building blocks for the agents
at the next higher level.
3) These building blocks are constantly rearranged as a result of what one might call either learning,
experience, evolution, or adaptation.
4) They all anticipate the future to some degree, making "predictions" on the basis of "mental" models of
their environment that act like computer subroutines under certain triggering conditions and then execute
certain behaviors no matter how simple, as in the case of bacteria.
5) They all have many niches they can exploit, whereby filling one niche often opens up new ones that can
be filled; complex adaptive systems, in other words, always create new opportunities.
6) As a consequence, it is meaningless to talk about complex adaptive systems being in equilibrium: they can
never get there, but are always in transition. If they would get there, they would be dead.
7) Likewise, the agents in complex adaptive systems cannot optimize their fitness, utility, etc.: the space of
possibilities is simply too vast in an environment which is also complex and rapidly changing; they can at
best improve on some dimensions, but never optimize.
7. Secondorder cybernetics: a bridge too far?
If one accepts these criteria as being valid for complex adaptive systems, and realizes that the social sciences
indeed mainly study those systems selforganizing, selfreferential, autopoietic, and thus with their own
strategies and expectations, with intertwining processes of emergence and adaptation then one is confronted
with one of the core problems of sociology, economics, and other social sciences: how to make a science out
of studying a bunch of imperfectly smart agents exploring their way into an essentially infinite space of
possibilities which they let alone the social scientists researching them are not even fully aware of.
There is indeed quite a methodological problem here. It is already very difficult to apply the principles and
methods (e.g., feedbacks and nonlinearities) of firstorder cybernetics to empirical social research, much
more so than to sociological theory, and nearly impossible to incorporate a secondorder cybernetics
approach in one's research design. Indeed, as far as empirical research is concerned, secondorder cybernetics
may be a bridge too far, given the research methodology and the mathematics presently available.
Applying the principles of firstorder cybernetics in empirical research already poses heavy demands on the
data sets and the methods of analysis: every feedback (Xt > Y > Xt+1), every interaction between variables
[Z > (X > Y)], and every nonlinear equation (Y = cX2 + bX + a), let alone nonlinear differential equation
(Y' = cY2 + bY + a), demands extra parameters to be estimated, and quickly exhausts the information
embedded in the data set. Admitting on top of that the secondorder notions that the research subjects can
change by investigating them, let alone being aware of the fact that these subjects may reorganize themselves
on the basis of knowledge acquired by them during the research, exceeds the powers of analysis and
imagination of even the most sophisticated methodologists: it equals the effort to solve an equation with at
least three unknowns.
In the case of secondorder cybernetics these problems indeed multiply: how does one obtain reliable data
within such a framework, where nothing is constant and everything is on the move, let alone base policy
relevant decisions on such data? How can one still forecast developments when at best retrospective analysis
of how a new level of complexity has emerged seems possible? Certainly, these are problems that are far
from solved, and a lot of work lies ahead before hypotheses derivable from secondorder cybernetics will be
fully testable. Nevertheless, the opportunities offered by this paradigm to present a truly realistic analysis of
the complex adaptive behavior of interacting groups of agents seems to good to pass up.
But the inherent problem remains: the more realistic and therefore less parsimonious a theory, the more
complex it becomes, and the more difficult to test the hypotheses and subhypotheses derived from it which
are used in collecting and interpreting the data. If one accepts that social systems have a high degree of
complexity, cybernetic theories become more relevant and fitting, but less testable as they grow more
complex themselves, as is the case with secondorder cybernetics as compared to firstorder cybernetics.
There is certainly a challenge here, for theorists and methodologists alike.
For the time being, sociology should perhaps model itself more on meteorology than on the natural sciences,
and force itself to give up the ambition to make accurate medium and longterm predictions, except in
delimited areas of research where complexity is still manageable or can be more or less contained. Ex post
facto explanation of how things have come to be as they are is already difficult enough for social scientists
nowadays. The best they may do at the turn of the millennium is to get a grip on the underlying laws of
change, perhaps by a theory transfer from those subfields within biology where secondorder cybernetics was
developed, and consequently to further develop the theories, the nonlinear mathematics and the simulation
techniques required to investigate the growth of complexity of human society.
This might ultimately result in adequate and empirically falsifiable models of selfreferential, selfsteering
and selforganizing actors on individual and supraindividual levels, interacting with each other in ever more
intricate networks to develop new and unforeseen higher levels of complexity, with new actors engaging in
new activities, speeding up the growth of complexity even more. The best one can do as sociologists under
these circumstances seems to accept that there is not any one desirable and sustainable state for society only
nearcontinuous transition, often coupled with the impossibility to forecast even the near future and that
consequently one can engage at best in some degree of damage control, by pointing out the probability of
future catastrophes to those who might be able to help averting them.
Unfortunately, interdisciplinary and internationalcomparative research centers to study complexityrelated
problems, though sorely needed, barely exist as yet, although the systemic rather than piecemeal approach
they could provide is required by the sheer complexity and interdependence of presentday societal
problems. This is partly due to a lack of political commitment to finance them on the part of politicians who
have to be reelected every four years, but partly it is also caused by the fact that most researchers are not yet
educated to work in truly interdisciplinary teams that presuppose an open mind, and at least a reasonable
knowledge of the other disciplines involved.
Ashby's "Law of Requisite Variety" states that only variety within a system can force down the variety due to
the system's environment at least if the system is to make fully sense of the latter and to be able to steer it.
Both the international political system and the international scientific system still have a long way to go in
this respect, and are barely organized yet as reasonably integrated systems that are aware of their policy
options. Grass roots pressure from below, such as is now visible regarding environmental pollution problems
in most of the Western "televisiondemocracies", is probably required to force politicians and scientists alike
to finally get their act together and to start tackling other complexityrelated problems as well.
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3) Easton, David, A Framework for Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1965
4) Buckley, Walter, Sociology and Modern Systems Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1967
Buckley, Walter (ed.), Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist: A Sourcebook. Chicago:
Aldine, 1968
5) Burns, Tom R., and Walter Buckley, Power and Control: Social Structures and their Transformation.
London: Sage, 1976;
Burns, Tom R., Thomas Baumgartner, and Philippe DeVillé, Man, Decisions, Society: The Theory of Actor
System Dynamics for Social Scientists. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1985
Burns, Tom R., and Helena Flam, The Shaping of Social Organization Social Rule System Theory with
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Baumgartner, Thomas, and Attle Midttun, The Politics of Energy Forecasting: A Comparative Study of
Energy Forecasting in Western Europe and North America. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987
6) Rosenblueth, Arturo, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow, "Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology",
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14) The Dutch translation sold no less than a quarter of a million copies.
15) Van der Zouwen, Johannes, in comments on this paper
16) Except for the universe itself, as Luhmann has noted, since it presumably has no boundaries.
17) One of the first to develop this now flourishing field was Watzlawick. See: Watzlawick, Paul, Janet
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19) To prevent misunderstanding, the following should be noted:
In circular causality, the causal feedback may be either linear or nonlinear; some authors conceive of linear
thinking as merely implying that the later elements of the causal chain are not the cause of previous
elements; in other words, no causal loop is postulated. In chaos theory, however, nonlinearity means that the
feedback in the differential equation is nonlinear.
Newton's differential equations are not all necessarily linear, as in the case of the movement of three
masses; these analytically unsolvable equations led Poincaré to his chaos theory avant la lettre.
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Evolution of Selfsteering Systems. London: Sage, 1988
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J. van der Zouwen (eds.) Selfreferencing in Social Systems. Salinas, CA: Intersystems Publications, 1990
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Springer, 1989
Prusinkiewicz, Przemyslav, and Aristid Lindenmayer, The Algorithmic Beaty of Plants. New York: Springer,
1990
63) Leydesdorff, Loet, "The Evolution of Communication Systems", Systems Research and Information
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65) Holland, John H., Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
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Holland, John H., Holyoak, K.J., Nisbett, R.E., and Thagard, P.R., Induction: Processes of Inference,
Learning, and Discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986
66) Waldrop, M. Mitchell, Complexity The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. New York:
Simon and Schuster (Touchstone), 1992; see pp. 145147
Copies obtainable by writing, phoning, faxing or emailing to the author:
Felix Geyer, SISWO, Plantage Muidergracht 4, 1018 TV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Phone: 3120 527 0652/3120 527 0600 Fax: 3120 622 9430 Email: SISWO at SARA.NL

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