AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CYBERNETICS
Annual Meeting 1996
Urbino, Italy, April 1-5, 1996
Faculty of Sociology, University of Urbino
CONSTRUCTING PERSONS:
THE BIOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ARTIFICIAL DESIGN OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE
Scientific Committee: Ernst von Glasersfeld, Frank Galuszka, Frederick
Steier, Harvey Horowitz, Heinz von Foerster, Louis Kauffman, Klaus
Krippendorff, Massimo Negrotti, Sheila MacNamee
The 1996 meeting of the ASC will deal with a major theme for all
the disciplines adopting a cybernetics and systemic perspective. Persons
can be observed as constructions in observations by systems and/or as
systems observing other systems and realities. Furthermore, persons may
be observed as biological, psychological, sociological, historical,
artificial realities and they may be observed as observing or managing
biological, psychological, sociological, historical, artificial realities.
At the end of our century, there is a particular interest in the
problems of "persons", that is in observing them and in their
(self-)observations. Cybernetics can give a substantial contribution to
clarify this kind of interest. In order to give some guidelines to the
meeting, we are attempting to differentiate three general sessions: 1.
sociological and historical construction of persons, 2. persons and
artificial sciences, 3. psychotherapy and the construction of persons.
These general sessions will also include presentations of scholars who
are not members of the ASC. In this way, we hope to open the meeting to
the contributions of European scholars, creating a connection among
different perspectives, within a systemic approach. Papers presented in
the parallel sessions, workshops, seminars, could follow this general
differentiation among themes, but they could also try either to connect
them or ignore them, without any limitation. Proposals of parallel
sessions, workshops and seminars are welcome. A list of themes could be
as follows:
1. Artificial systems 9. Men & machines
2. Arts & music involvement 10. Organizations
3. Biological systems 11. Professional helpers
4. Communication 12. Personal constructs
5. Interactive presentation 13. Psychotherapy
6. Epistemology and systems theory 14. Self-observation
7. Intercultural communication 15. Social construction
8. Historical meanings of persons 16. Social systems
Abstracts of about 30-35 lines should be sent to the attention of
Dr. Claudio Baraldi (Dott. Domenico Donnanno), Facolta di Sociologia, Via
Saffi 15, 61029 Urbino (Ps) Italy, before November 30, 1995.
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S.A. Umpleby, Dept. of Mgt. Science, GWU, Wash. DC 20052 USA
tel: 202/994-5219, fax: 202/994-5225, e-mail: umpleby@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
URL: http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~umpleby