>Yes, we need to keep plugging away. But do we need to keep trodding
>the same old worn paths? I keep seeing us dragging this legacy of Cartesian
>Reductionist science up the hill with us and then having us fall back
>down due to its weight. We ARE in the middle of a revolution, but we
>behave as if the way to deal with it is with the old ways. We deal
>with an amazing set of revelations about complexity, systems, super-
>organisms, etc. and then set out to proceed as if the world were
>the machine like thing Descartes saddled us with.
Exactly! This is the nature of the problem on which we might, with
cybernetic ideas, make more progress.
> I have to admit that i don't really know what cybernetics
>is, nor do I really want to!
You have got to be kidding! Aren't you a neurophysiologist involved in the
study of ecological problems? I do not claim to be a total expert, but I
think you probably do understand many of the principles of cybernetics, but
perhaps under a variety of different names in various sciences e.g.
homeostasis, hormonal relationships, neural nets, etc. etc.
>Disciplinary boundaries are artificial and are of limited usefulness.
Right. This precisely why cybernetics is important. So your suppositions
about cybernetics perhaps involve both a misconception and a contradiction!
If you think that artificial boundaries are part of the problem then it
would follow that you need a more coherent and inclusive frame of
reference. Cybernetics provides this interdisciplinary framework. This is
not the place, nor am I the person, to spell this out in detail. But I
think it is one of the tragedies of our time that cybernetics has so
largely been seen in terms of narrow technological applications.
I am a physician, and I see that biological organisms function on
cybernetic feedback principles, as do ecological systems. How can you not
want to recognize, exploit and and optimize this in your work!! For me,
postgrad work in psychiatry, and then in management sciences, policy
analysis and administration, followed by years of multi-level
responsibilities in medical schools and government at the higher levels,
convinced me that Peter Drucker and Buckminster Fuller and Karl Popper,
among others (Wiener, Ashby et al) were on the right track in keying in on
cybernetic concepts (although not always in the same words) as the way to
understand how the world works.
>The issue I am trying to confront is to see if we can at least begin to
>understand what is going on. I know that my computer, the
>internet, recent writings on complexity, etc. have profoundly
>changed me in ways I never intended. I also know that the
>seeds for those changes were already there due to a variety of
>ideas and experiences from the past. I suspect that the revolution
>proceeds because of events like those I am experiencing. It seems
>to be very regresive for us to pretend that our task and our
>goals remain the same. In fact, these are, in a big way, ALSO being
>shaped for us whether we like it or not. Just for an attempt to
>be more specific, I'd suggest we consider:
>
>1. Erasing the distinction between hard and soft science, and even
>between scientific and nonscientific approaches. There is a lot of
>stuff out there being dismissed because of these distinctions.
Agreed. To do this, though, we need an alternative framework for perceiving
and conceptualizing experience in which we can have confidence, viz.
cybernetics. Cybernetics may have originated as the science of
communication and control in the animal and the machine, but its principles
are even more widely applicable e.g. to organizations of all kinds, as
well as to the processes of perception and mind through which we organize
ideas and values.
>2. Working hard to understand how our questions and answers are
>shaped by our biases (training is a part of this). We see what we
>were trained to look for, and more important, fail to see much
>of the rest.. . .
Agreed. We need conceptual systems within which we can more clearly see the
relationships among the parts, in terms of which different disciplines can
communicate, to understand how they relate to the whole. We can't afford to
reduce everything to subjective experience (e.g. the "feeling of freedom"),
or to particular theories, whether of perception or behavior or
psychoanalysis or brain physiology or physics and chemistry or whatever.
All these things are important parts not just of an overall theory but of
existence.
>3. Realizing that we are not going to predict and control as much
>as we had hoped, and therefore we will be seen as less useful to
>those who thought it important to support what we do. This
>may be the tough one!
Right again. An analogy suggests itself. Rather than imagine we could
send a rocket directly to the moon, planners realized that it was necessary
to take into account orbital motions and the various changing gravitational
fields. By doing this they could achieve success that otherwise was quite
impossible.
Those who support scientists may well be influenced more by demonstrable
feasibility than simpler hopes and conjectures. Perhaps cybernetic
approaches can make more projects feasible.
Cheers!
Bruce B.