A Second‐order Cybernetics of Otherness

A Second-Order Cybernetics of Otherness

In the spirit of second-order cybernetics, human communication is reconceptualized by including in the process not only its theorists but also their observed Others without whom social reality is inconceivable. This essay examines several versions of otherness, how the voices of Others survive social scientific inquiries, the dialogical spaces made available for people to build their home, and ...

Cybernetics: Cybernetics and the Theory of Knowledge

Introduction: a conference doing the cybernetics of cybernetics

This paper introduces the other papers in this issue, describing and arguing for the context in which they were written – a conference that was, unusually, based in conversation rather than reporting through the presentation of papers: and a refereeing process that continued after the initial presentation (at the conference) of the work reported, thus allowing responses to critical comments. Ma...

Thinking, Recognition and Otherness

There was her body, quiet, used, resting: there was her mind, free, clear, shining: there was the boy and his eyes, seeing what? And ecstasy. Things would hurt when this light dimmed. The boy would change. But now in the sun she recognised him, and recognised that she did not know, and had never seen him, and loved him, in the bright new air with a simplicity she had never expected to know. “Yo...

Cybernetics

pared, and the successive stages of implantation and placental formation in various mammals are compared with those in man. Although the authors have quite successfully attempted to keep the book as short as possible, they have succeeded in putting much of great value in it with the result that it can be highly recommended. No biological library is complete without a copy of this excellent acco...