I see Bateson with Ashby, Pask, von Foerster, etc. as one of the great
cyberneticians. His insights into the nature of circular processes and
self-representation cannot be underestimated.
>during and after WW2. He would certainly have been fascinated by "the Net"
>and with some of the ideas brought forth by the Principia Cybernetica
>Project. And he might still inspire and inform it, I believe.
Please participate: post notes to PRNCYB-L about Bateson, write nodes for
the PCP Web.
> Bateson's most interesting "successor", even if a much less elegant
>writer, seems to be Anthony Wilden - an Anglo-Canadian communications
>professor, formerly based at Simon Frazer Univ. outside Vancouver and now
>(back) in S. F./Ca. (wilden@sfu.ca).
I read Wilden as an undergraduate. His ideas are quite challenging, and
many are extreme. His style and prejudices threaten to swamp his message.
> The whole is NOT (just) "more than the sum of its parts" - it's of
>another logical type, qualitatively different from that, and something
>else..
Yes, indeed: how impoverished, really, are these concepts of "more than"
and "sum".
O---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, NRC Research Associate, Cybernetician at Large
| Mail Code 522.3, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
| joslyn@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~joslyn 301-286-5773
V All the world is biscuit-shaped. . .