Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 248

excentricity or folly, for under certain circumstances inclusion of the
observer in his descriptions may lead to paradoxes, to wit the utterance “I
am a liar.”
In the meantime however, it has become clear that this narrow restriction
not only creates the ethical problems associated with scientific activity, but
also cripples the study of life in full context from molecular to social organi-
zations. Life cannot be studied in vitro , one has to explore it in vivo .
In contradistinction to the classical problem of scientific inquiry that pos-
tulates first a description-invariant “objective world” (as if there were such
a thing) and then attempts to write its description, now we are challenged
to develop a description-invariant “subjective world,” that is a world which
includes the observer: This is the problem .
However, in accord with the classic tradition of scientific inquiry which
perpetually asks “How?” rather than “What?,” this task calls for an episte-
mology of “How do we know?” rather than “What do we know?”
The following notes on an epistemology of living things address them-
selves to the “How?” They may serve as a magnifying glass through which
this problem becomes better visible.
II. Introduction
The twelve propositions labeled 1, 2, 3,...12,of the following 80 Notes are
intended to give a minimal framework for the context within which the
various concepts that will be discussed are to acquire their meaning. Since
Proposition Number 12 refers directly back to Number 1, Notes can be read
in a circle. However, comments, justifications, and explanations, which apply
to these propositions follow them with decimal labels (e.g., “5.423”) the last
digit (“3”) referring to a proposition labeled with digits before the last digit
(“5.42”), etc. (e.g., “5.42” refers to “5.4,” etc.).
Although Notes may be entered at any place, and completed by going
through the circle, it appeared advisable to cut the circle between proposi-
tions “11” and “1,” and present the notes in linear sequence beginning with
Proposition 1.
Since the formalism that will be used may for some appear to obscure
more than it reveals, a preview of the twelve propositions* with comments
in prose may facilitate reading the notes.
1. The environment is experienced as the residence of objects, stationary, in
motion, or changing. **
Obvious as this proposition may look at first glance, on second thought one
may wonder about the meaning of a “changing object.” Do we mean the
* In somewhat modified form.
** Propositions appear in italics.